Conservative bloggers Stacy McCain and Ali Akbar report today that progressive activists/terrorists Brett Kimberlin and Neal Rauhauser have been working for weeks to derail Blog Bash, which was inaugurated in 2010 as a party for conservative bloggers and is held during CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. At Blog Bash, bloggers meet, network and present awards recognizing the achievements of outstanding conservative bloggers.
In 2012, I joined dozens of top conservative bloggers to stand as a united front against Kimberlin and Rauhauser because they had successfully been destroying the lives of conservative bloggers who were shining a light on Kimberlin’s criminal past as part of their investigations of his progressive activist organization, Velvet Revolution. Kimberlin was using Velvet Revolution to destroy James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles for their video exposés of ACORN. Instead of working to build a life that would show he had put his violent past behind him, Kimberlin leveraged his past as a bomber to intimidate the employers of Aaron Walker and his wife, causing them to be fired, as well as the employer of Stacy McCain’s wife, forcing him to move. Team Kimberlin is now leveraging Kimberlin’s bomber street cred against the owners of the venue hosting Blog Bash to frighten them into cancelling the event.
Dear Stacy is gathering all the news on this story, so please go to The Other McCain for the full scoop.
Stacy also is kindly sending his readers here urging them to donate the money I need to attend CPAC. My father will be 97 next month and I only leave him unattended a few hours at a time to do errands and go to the gym. To attend CPAC, I have to hire someone to care for my father while I am away, plus cover gas, tolls and meals. Dear Stacy’s readers already have donated about a quarter of the funds required, but I need $570 more to attend the whole conference. I am very grateful for every donation and every kind thought and prayer. In my next post I’ll finally explain why my blogging has been so spotty since November 2010 — I’ve been fighting for my life and I didn’t want to discuss it because I wasn’t winning. But thanks to all the donors to this blog, I think I’ve found the cure for the incurable condition that was killing me.
Now that it looks like I’ve overcome my health challenges, I’m finally able to tackle the career and financial challenges that developed as a result. Being able to attend CPAC is a vital part of my ability to build my new career as a blogger, author and speaker. I became a fiscal conservative in the fall of 2008 during the Obama/McCain presidential campaign. I started this blog on Jan. 12, 2009 and attended CPAC about six weeks later, thanks to an invitation to coffee by dear Joy McCann, aka Little Miss Attila, who introduced me there to Stacy McCain.
I was only in my first seminar at CPAC 2009 about 10 minutes when Andrew Klavan opined the conservative movement ought to do more outreach to gays and I astonished him by thanking him for the welcome. (GOProud hadn’t been founded then.) At that CPAC I also met PJ Media’s Roger L. Simon, Melissa Clouthier (Blog Bash co-founder), Pamela Geller (I went total fan girl on her and wept), Fausta (an authority on Central and South America), Instapundit and many others. I fell in love at CPAC. As a consequence of making friends with Stacy, shortly after CPAC he made sure I was invited to a reception where I met and chatted with Andrew Breitbart (the progressive blog, Sadly No, made my photo with him viral). I also met Moe Lane and Jimmy Bise and soon was being invited to events by Matthew Vadum, the leading authority on ACORN.
Since then I’ve moved heaven and earth to get to CPAC because meeting other bloggers and prominent people in the conservative movement is the best way to undemonize myself and build rapport and trust. My career depends on being there and doing that.
While CPAC has had its issues with GOProud, they have consistently been very good to me and have given me official CPAC blogger credentials every year since I first applied for them in 2010. This worked out very well for the conservative movement last year because my arm was around dear Andrew Breitbart for a photo when a progressive gadfly reporter attacked him as a homophobe for his departure from GOProud’s Advisory Board (the video was posted on Mediaite, the story is quoted and linked by libertarian Bruce Majors–and includes the reporter’s remark that he likes me after meeting me at CPAC in 2009). With Breitbart’s arm around me, the gadfly reporter couldn’t frame him as a homophobe. Also last year, HuffPo used a photo of me dancing to a rap song that Steven Crowder and Chris Loesch debuted at the blogger awards meeting in an attempt to ridicule conservatives as racists and bigots. It went viral on Gawker and Mediaite (I have the links in a post I wrote last year, if you’re curious). Steven and Chris were able to point out the lefties were mocking A Conservative Lesbian and because he recognized me from CPAC, Warner Todd Huston made their attacks on the three of us a laughingstock.
I don’t know what contribution I will make at CPAC this year, I just know I will go intending to make one. I am grateful in advance for everyone who sends a donation or kind thought or prayer. Thank you.
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