Have you listened to the new, earlier bRight @ Night? It has all the same good stuff like a look at the best posts from around the conservative side of the blogosphere, and the news of the day, but without me falling asleep on the air! How does that sound? Want more? OK. The chat room will be open, and you can call in: 718.664.9725

The fun starts in less than 10 minutes. Get over there.

Does someone in the legacy media finally get it?

Yet, the American public’s astonishing decision to pick someone with so little experience (a few years as the Junior Senator from Illinois, and before that, a “carreer” as a community organizer) as President of the United States underscores just how alarmingly expertise is discounted — or equated with elitism — in our increasingly democratized era, and just how thoroughly colorful personal narratives overshadow policy arguments and actual knowledge.

See the answer below.

No. I had to do some minor editing on the NYT book review of Going Rogue

Yet, Mr. McCain’s astonishing decision to pick someone with so little experience (less than two years as the governor of Alaska, and before that, two terms as mayor of Wasilla, a town with fewer than 7,000 residents) as his running mate and Ms. Palin’s own surprisingly nonchalant reaction to Mr. McCain’s initial phone call about the vice president’s slot (she writes that it felt “like a natural progression”) underscore just how alarmingly expertise is discounted — or equated with elitism — in our increasingly democratized era, and just how thoroughly colorful personal narratives overshadow policy arguments and actual knowledge.

I guess they just don’t do irony at the New York Times.

Having learned nothing from this

We get this

Not quite the way other leaders have done things. Of course being a clueless pretender with no experience and a general disdain for the country you are supposed to be leading does have it’s drawbacks.

It’s time for the

Nominations are going on now. Here’s the schedule:

Nominations Nov. 3, 2009 – Nov. 20, 2009
Finalists Announced December 28, 2009
Voting January 4, 2010 – January 11, 2009

bRight & Early is in the Best Large Blog category. I don’t know how. Go by and up my nomination by clicking on the plus sign in the comments below my nomination. It’s near the bottom of the comment section.

One more week for nominations. Get to it people!

You’ve got to love the coverage of today’s announcement regarding bringing the 9/11 terrorists to trial in New York. I’ve been reading a bit of it and this paragraph, in a Reuters story headlined New York split over plan to try September 11 plotters caught my attention.

Several security scares since 2001 — a 2007 steam pipe explosion and earlier this year a low flying plane trailed by a fighter jet flying over the Statue of Liberty for a photo shoot — have created panic among still jittery New Yorkers.

I added the bold, just in case you didn’t see what I saw.

Are you kidding me? A “low flying plane”? Uh, could you be a little more specific? It was one of the aircraft that becomes Airforce One when the President is on board.

As for the rest of this travesty, that will have to wait for later for comment.

Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio is going to be the keynote speaker at CPAC.

CPAC Director Lisa De Pasquale made the announcement on the conference’s Twitter feed.

“We chose Rubio because he is an upcoming leader. He is someone that a lot of people are excited about,” De Pasquale told POLITICO. “His name keeps getting brought up and we decided that he would be a good keynote for 2010.”

He is an excellent choice. As Allahpundit said at Hot Air:

It’s an easy pick because there’s no pol in America aside from Sarahcuda whom the base is more excited about, and he needs this exposure a lot more than she does. It’s essentially a huge, free advertisement for his Senate campaign with all the earned media that goes along with that. And of course it’s a great advertisement for conservatives too: He’s young, charismatic, and a minority, which makes him almost the polar opposite of the standard media caricature of right-wingers.

My guess is that the crowd at CPAC is going to love this choice. He is extremely popular with party activist, going 12-0 in straw polls, winning most by huge margins.

The race between Rubio and Crist is being touted as an indicator of conservative sentiment and power. CPAC may give Rubio the name recognition he needs, and then the real test can begin.

Ace and DrewM have an idea. One question is “where”? If you don’t like the choices in the poll (located in the right sidebar) leave a comment here.

I would love to put together a Twitter list of AoSHQ morons. If you’re on Twitter, let me know in the comments or follow me @bRigthandEarly. I’ll post a link later.

It is impossible to thank enough all of those who serve. They protect us and our freedoms. These words by Charles M. Province can only begin to express the many ways we owe an unpayable debt to the men and women of our military.

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

To all of you who have served, no matter when or where, thank you.

Thank you for all you have done and continue to do.

Senate candidates Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio appeared at the Alachua County Republican Party’s 7th Annual Ronald Reagan Black Tie and Blue Jeans BBQ. Laura Ingraham was the keynote speaker.

Rubio gave the event’s invocation, but first made comments along his campaign theme of being the race’s true conservative.

“It’s very simple: We already have a Democratic Party in America,” he said. “We do not need two Democratic parties in America.”

Crist gave a speech running through a long list of positions to prove his conservative bona fides, from support of gun rights to tax cuts. But he received a less enthusiastic greeting than Rubio from the grassroots activists in attendance, even getting a small smattering of boos.

This scenario, minus the candidates, has been playing out at county events all summer. Rubio’s support, at least as indicated in straw polls held among party activists, has been outstanding. On possible reaction to the NY-23 special election may be for the NRSC to stay out of this critical primary.

One can only hope.

I’m sure most of you are already aware of the shootings that took place earlier this afternoon at Fort Hood in Texas. The story is very fluid and changing very quickly. There is plenty of speculation and few known facts. The few of those are 12 dead and 31 wounded. The shooter was Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan a 39 or 40 year old convert to Islam who was a psychiatrist at the base. Hasan was killed by a local LEO who was himself killed in the firefight.

I have a feeling that the details on this, when they are known, are going to be very strange.

Updates as they become known.

7:19 – Reports now are saying the correct name is Nidal Malik Hasan. One thing I’m hearing from multiple news stations is that he received a bad evaluation when he was at Walter Reed.

10:12 – Hasan is not dead as previously reported.

Authorities identified the suspected gunman as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who had treated soldiers wounded in foreign wars preparing for foreign deployment at the post.

“Our investigation is ongoing but preliminary reports indicate that there was a single shooter,” Lieutenant-General Robert Cone, Fort Hood’s commanding officer, told a news conference. “The shooter is not dead but in custody in stable condition.”

Cone said the suspect had been shot multiple times. He previously said the suspect was killed by police officers during the attack at the biggest military facility in the world.

Asked whether the shootings were a terrorist act, Cone said, “I couldn’t rule that out, but I’m telling you that right now the evidence does not suggest that.”