“Who’s Mick Wright? If you have the debate, I’ll beat he’s shown to be Mick Wrong.”

I open with this quote by “polar donkey” not only because it’s the most efficient comment I’ve seen lately that includes both a misspelling and an insult cliché but also because it reveals at least some interest in the live debate I challenged Chris Davis to have with me.

Another fan of Davis writing from somewhere in Middle Tennessee says, “It would be worth the drive to Memphis to see that.”

If nothing else, it shows there are plenty of Leftists in the area that would like to see a neo-conservative Republican get a good lambasting, even if it’s a nobody, someone they’ve never heard of before.

Of course the interest in a live debate is shared by some folks lining up behind me, including Tom Guleff (”It would be interesting to hear the two sides”) and Donna Locke (”I might pay money to see that”).

Davis has responded to my debate invitation here and here.

Among other things, Davis questions my understanding of “how blogs work” as well as my (oh-so-typical) desire to add the dreaded element of sound to our discussion: “Mick, need a venue where you can turn up the volume?” and “I’m telling you, take away the element of volume and these guys are lost.”

My mistake, Chris. I honestly thought that was you and your buddies getting together, in person, around a table with a microphone. Maybe that was a cardboard stand-in and that’s a microphone with no volume control. I deeply regret the error.

So, I know I don’t understand how blogs work and all, but since I gave you the ability to suggest whatever format you desired, our debate could have easily included video and other elements that could be later posted to several blogs and linked around the world, thus continuing the discussion right here, in your comfort zone. Heck, it could’ve been liveblogged.

Davis writes about linking to me, “I wanted everybody to go and see the dumbness for themselves.”

That was my thought exactly. That’s why I gave the invitation.

Davis complains that I have exhibited multiple personalities and am here shown to be “popping a gear” instead of being “playfully combative,” while simultaneously being indignant that I called him a “moonbat.” Um, you think maybe I was being a little bit ironic by calling you a “moonbat” and an “offensive epithet factory” in the same sentence? Do you think I was being completely serious about making an effigy and parading it through the streets? My goodness, I thought you guys were supposed to be good at picking up on subtle humor.

Finally, I must take a moment to fully appreciate the nearly-incoherent statement by Davis that 90% of news is biased in my favor (who is guilty of “bad, silly science”?), supplemented by this comment by JeffC:

As for “The Liberal Media”, I always point to this, which is the document that launched a thousand liberal blogships:

http://www.bartcop.com/libmedia.htm

What you’ll find there is a list of some conservative (and some liberal) pundits and what they might say in a hypothetical situation, followed by a “prove me wrong” challenge.

Let’s see… I can’t technically disprove your obnoxiously dumb scenario given that it’s a, you know, hypothetical, and further given that you provide no comment section with which to do so.

I will say this: even if all of these pundits say what you think they would say, all of them are commentators, not straight news reporters. Nobody expects Keith Olbermann to be unbiased, but — and call me old-fashioned — I happen to like it when the regular news is delivered with a bit more restraint. For instance, be consistent with your terminology when you’re reporting a cloture vote, and be truthful when you’re informing the public about bureaucratic changes in the federal register.

But that’s another debate for another time, and apparently one some folks are actually not willing to have.

It’s fair of the acolytes to ask, “Who’s Mick Wright?”

I’m just an average guy with a full time job and a few spare hours here and there to stay informed. I have no background in public speaking. I have no expert information or any special skills or assets. Davis is a trained stage man with access to a newsroom, with hours to research and interview anybody he likes, and with a press pass to get him just about anywhere. To top it all off, he’s not just a dumb Republican like me.

Davis, and his buddies on the Left, never had a better opportunity.

UPDATE: Top Ten Excuses Chris Davis Has for Not Participating in a Live Debate

1. Isn’t running for a political or religious office, such as “Jesus.”
2. His challenger just wants to control the volume.
3. His challenger just has something to prove.
4. His challenger just wants to “take it outside.”
5. His challenger just wants to compare the size of their sexual organs.
6. The debate would not benefit anyone.
7. The debate would not alter the political landscape.
8. The debate would not shape our world for the better.
9. Has other commitments that prevent him from debating.
10. Wants to hold a similar debate online.

For no particular reason, I have undertaken an effort to catalog and categorize the reasons why Americans disagree with the war in Iraq or have increasingly turned against it.

What it reinforces for me is that people who are “anti-war” do not present a unified front, and should not all be lumped together — it shows how critics appear on both the Right and the Left.

A person can be against the war for only one of these reasons, or several; everyone theoretically has a threshold under category three — a point at which even the strongest supporters of the war would conclude that the cost of action is too high. And it also suggests that those who disagree on every point, or agree on every point, are being insincere.

The outline vividly explains why support for the war continues on a downward trend, despite any successes and victories the U.S. coalition and Iraqis have achieved.

Breaking it down also helps me pinpoint where people are coming from and puts me in a better position to offer constructive counter-arguments.

Can you add to this list (PDF)? At some point I may take the trouble to code this thing in HTML; until then, deal.

I hereby challenge Chris Davis (a.k.a. Pesky Fly), the blogger, Leftist moonbat employee of the Memphis Flyer and offensive epithet factory, to a live, in-person debate, held in a neutral forum and moderated by an agreed-upon volunteer.

I’ll give Mr. Davis until Midnight on Feb. 15 to accept my offer. If he declines or fails to respond by the deadline, I will from that point on ignore (to the best of my ability) all the childish name calling he tries to pass off as intellectualism and remove that eternally-nonreciprocal link from my blogroll.

If Mr. Davis accepts the invitation before the deadline, I will give him eight additional weeks to agree on a moderator, location, format and date. If he fails to commit on these specifics within that time period, same rule applies, plus I will construct a crude effigy of him and parade it through the streets of Marty Aussenberg’s lily white enclave, whereupon onlookers will have an opportunity to heap scorn.

The answer in my case is pale… very pale, at the moment. For proof, see a hideous picture of me below, standing with former Rep. J. C. Watts of Oklahoma, who is not so pale. Watts headlined the local party’s Lincoln Day dinner this weekend.

Knowing I would probably get a chance to meet him, I stopped by Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of his book, What Color is a Conservative?, thinking he could sign it for me. But their meager politics section had none. I looked elsewhere and asked an employee — none in stock. Next I tried Davis Kidd, perhaps one of the largest book stores in Memphis, which is always well-stocked and where I had actually found the book before. But they, too, had nothing. With time running out, I ran over to Bookstar, which is owned by Barnes & Noble, for one last attempt. Nothing there, either. All three stores had plenty of Barak Obama, though — Obama in politics, Obama in new releases, Obama in biography, Obama in African American month, Obama everywhere. The stores had no room for a single copy of the 2002 Watts book because each had to have 14 rows wide of Obama in every applicable section. Disappointing.

Anyway, photo I warned you about below the fold, followed by disjointed notes not of this weekend’s speech, but from his SRLC speech last March. (more…)

In all my time studying media bias, I’ve never come across such a remarkable case as this.

On a day when the Senate Republicans were voting against a cloture motion, the newspapers were reporting this:

CNN: GOP blocks Senate debate on Iraq resolution
Washington Post: GOP Stalls Debate On Troop Increase
AP: Republicans Block Senate Debate on Iraq

As Lance at A Second Hand Conjecture, Glenn Reynolds and Ed Morrissey point out, cloture means putting an end to a debate. It was Democrats who were voting for an end to debate, not Republicans.

But perhaps the most ridiculous comments were made by TIME columnist Joe Klein at his “Swampland” blog:

I just spoke with a prominent Democratic member of the Senate who is worried that the anti-surge forces won’t be able to muster the 60 votes necessary to open debate this evening on the Warner resolution to oppose the President’s policies in Iraq.

If so, the Republicans are going to have to explain what they have against free speech…

James Taranto reminds us that it wasn’t long ago that Democrats, the New York Times and friends were ever-so interested in saving the filibuster — that wonderful tool of open debate — from the power-hungry clutches of a Republican majority: “we don’t recall the paper using the ‘block debate’ formulation back when the Democrats were filibustering judicial nominations.”

No, then a vote against closure was a vote against a President who wanted to rush through his policies without debate, over the objections of the all-important minority party. Democrats such as Robert Byrd and John Kerry were adamant that a rules change allowing a simple majority to end a filibuster would destroy our very democracy (even though Democrats had themselves changed the threshold from 67 to 60 votes in 1975).

Now a Republican filibuster is a barrier to debate and an insult to “free speech.”

As if Klein hadn’t already showed his supreme ignorance, he later posted a liveblogging update:

Boy, is this confusing! Arlen Spector [sic] is arguing that “this is not a debate to be short-circuited”….but he’s arguing against Democrats, arguing that they’re trying to limit amendments, and therefore he’s going to vote against cloture?

Get a freaking clue, man.

I can’t stop myself from quoting Kerry’s rant again:

You want to use the power of ending a filibuster? Just have the filibuster for week after week after week and let people stand up and make their arguments, and if the arguments have no currency — believe me — between the press and public opinion and the bloggers and C-SPAN, this country will rise up, and you’ll get your 60 votes, if you deserve them. That’s an up-or-down vote of it’s own kind — you vote!

Ahhh, the good old days…

Today, of course, Sen. Kerry voted for cloture.

Which means putting an end to debate. Except when it doesn’t.

UPDATE: At least USA Today gets it right with this subhead: Each party says other is trying to limit debate… which places our Leftist media clearly on one side.

UPDATE II: Longer Chris Davis: “If I disagree with your argument or analysis, I’m going to rephrase it in the most slanted way possible and call you vulgar names, but in a way that leaves me with plausible deniability, because I’m childish and spineless, and that’s the way I roll.”

While the rest of the blogosphere has moved on to scoffing at John Edwards’ star-stuttering appearance on Meet the Press (why wasn’t Mike Huckabee’s interview considered first in the “Candidates 2008 series,” by the way?) and poking fun at his less-than-stellar blog hire, we’re still laughing at the National Review headline, “There Are Two Americas; John Edwards’ New House Takes Up Almost All of One Of Them.”

The Edwards home is apparently the largest and most valuable in Orange County, North Carolina. Have you seen it yet?

What’s perhaps more remarkable is that Edwards has actually produced a book titled Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.

Does it get any better than this?

Home. The place that helps to define how we see ourselves and how we choose to make our way in the world — the blueprint of our lives.

After seeing the photo, people had already started to question Edwards’ sincerity when it comes to poverty and environmentalism; it can’t help that if appears fixated on homes and considers them a fundamental aspect of our existence.

Incidentally, one of the featured homes is Danny Glover’s.

The AP has a story up about the DNC’s winter meeting yesterday and the theme songs picked by the 2008 hopefuls.

Some of the selections make sense, such as John Edwards picking “This is Our Country(s)” by John Mellencamp. Others are rather odd, such as Chris Dodd picking two love songs by The Tempations, one to play as he approached the stage, and the other as he left the podium.

Like Dodd, Hillary Clinton also chose two theme songs. Both have a meaningful and memorable chorus but rather unfortunate opening lines.

To enter, Clinton selected “Right Here, Right Now,” by Jesus Jones, which begins:

A woman on the radio talked about revolution
When its already passed her by

And to exit the stage, Hillary picked “Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, which opens with this line:

I met a devil woman

Ouch.

This was the view outside our door this morning. Er, not. But that’s what the news told us to expect. No snow yet. Not even ice.

UPDATE: Ok, so they were off by one day. I can’t believe they close all the schools for this.