So here’s the thing — I’ve been doing the Morning Briefing for over a year now. It all came about after filling in on a local radio show for two and a half months for free after the local radio show host got caught in a drug raid. I figured if I got good enough one day I could fulfill my dream of guest hosting for Rush. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m still working on it.

In any event, I realized local radio guys have no one to help with their show prep but themselves, so I figured I could help out. I talked to my friend Kenny, who has a local show (good morning, Kenny) and he said go for it. The rest is history.

But I’ve thought it can sometimes be a bit sterile and I sometimes struggle for length and more often than not I’m up at 4am and realize I want to talk about something, but there isn’t a post at RedState so I do a post then do the briefing and . . . anyway, I want it to be useful and a pleasure to read.

Tens of thousands of the hundreds of thousands of people who read this tell me they wake up with me. That kind of creeps me out because I know what my bed head looks like in the morning and my name isn’t Wilt Chamberlain, but I at least want to be presentable.

So an experiment. This is a work in progress and its form will, should we keep it, evolve. You’re getting the regular Morning Briefing and you are getting this too. Email me at goodmorning@redstate.com and tell me which you prefer. Seriously.

Now to the news.

1. Morning Quick Hits

(A) Obama Calls Out Riot Police to Club Grandma

The White House called out riot police to take on the tea partiers in Quincy, IL.

No, the secret service did not ask for them. The White House advance team did. They wanted the visual of angry activists being put down by the police. Instead, they got frightened nine year olds. Don’t expect to find much press coverage of this. It doesn’t fit the narrative (more on that below).

(B) Obama Will Decide How Much You Can Make

Barack Obama has decided some people have made enough money. Seriously. What the heck gives him the right to make that determination? Should Bill Gates give back all the money he’s donated to charity, or is it just that no one else is allowed to get rich now?

What gives Barack Obama the right to decide who has made enough?

(C) God Stuff

At 9:00 a.m. this morning a report is coming out from the bi-partisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom. We conservatives all suspect Barack Obama, on those rare occasions he actually defends the faith he sometimes claims he holds, know he is dropping the ball on this and the bipartisan commission is going to ding him.

I’ll be surprised if there is major media coverage. It’s religion AND politics. But conservatives will be talking about it. Here’s an excerpt:

US foreign policy on religious freedom is missing the mark. Certainly symbolic of this is the fact that the Ambassador-At-Large on International Religious Freedom has yet to be named, well over a year into this Administration…. But, in a world of foreign policy and diplomacy, where every word is chosen to convey meaning and interest, there is an even more important situation that could be taken by some in the world community as a signal that freedom of religion is not a priority for the Administration…. Presidential references to religious freedom have become rare, often replaced at most with references to freedom of worship…. Freedom of worship is only one aspect of religious freedom, and a purposeful change in language could mean a much narrower view of this right…. Our foreign policy must be better at exposing and castigating the Potemkin Villages of religious worship, where churches might well be propped up for services, but where the faithful can’t get basic services because of their views, are gunned down with impunity while leaving church, are viciously caricatured and attacked by state-run press, and are otherwise relegated to second-class citizenship. The oppressed of this world look to the Administration, indeed, all of us, with hope and forbearance, to do more…. The current Administration has been insufficiently engaged. In promoting the freedom of religion or belief abroad….the US can and must do more.

D. The newest national security threat

School lunches are a national security threat. Seriously. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached a point of unseriousness when real security threats are not considered as such and school lunches are. This is Barack Obama’s America now.

2. The Media Narratives

(A) Florida

Charlie Crist is going independent. As you read your headlines this morning you are going to hear a great deal about purity tests in the GOP — never mind that Charlie Crist could not win the primary despite being the sitting Governor of Florida.

It’s sexier for the talking heads to talk about bigoted, close minded, racist, flag waving conservatives, except they can’t in Florida because those bigoted, close minded, racist, flag waving conservatives are going with a Latino. Had Rubio left the party, that’s all we’d hear about. Instead, we’re going to hear a lot about purity tests.

Tip for reporters: It’s the Democrats who are seeing third party challenges in places like North Carolina. Oh, and let’s conveniently ignore the GOP puts pro-abortion, pro-gay rights politicians on the stage at the Republican Convention and in committee chairmanships. When’s the last time you saw a pro-life Democrat treated as well?

But then that blows the narrative.

Speaking of narratives, let’s go to Arizona.

(B) Arizona

We’ve all been subjected to weeks of the talking heads (incidentally, if I ever am blessed with a TV show the set is going to look like Joe Scarborough’s, but all the talking heads will be via satellite. Their heads will appear on TV screens that have replaced the heads of well dressed mannequins surrounding the table and when I get annoyed with one I’ll pick up the remote control and take off their particular head. At 4am and without coffee this sounds really cool to me, but I digress . . .) talking about the angry rhetoric coming from the right.

You can’t call Barack Obama a Nazi or a Socialist, but by God you sure as heck can call Arizona Nazi-like, fascist, etc.

The media will not dare play up the angry rhetoric against Arizona like they did the tea partiers because, well, tea partiers are supposed to angry and Arizona Republicans are supposed to be racist.

That’s the narrative. But the narrative is leading to absurd results.

Only now is the media discovering that being an illegal alien is, in fact, illegal.

Joy Behar broke out the Nazi card, but of course if you ever said that about someone on the left she’d try comedy on you instead of hyperbole. By the way, Cardinal Mahoney did too. If only that man got as worked up by the actual Gospel of Jesus Christ as he did the social gospel. If only. But he’s getting replaced by a conservative who will no doubt soon be vilified in the press for not being Cardinal Mahoney.

As an aside, don’t you love how the left eats up Catholic Bishops’ rhetoric on immigration, but it suddenly becomes a church-state separation issue the moment they bring up abortion or gay marriage?!

Nevermind that we have a federal republic and states can do stuff like this — or at least until the court’s say otherwise.

You know, if Canada were south of Arizona and Canadians were sneaking across the border, the left wouldn’t be playing the race card. Have we really reached a point where we cannot pass legislation to crack down on acts by foreign citizens because those law breakers happen to all, or at least 90 some odd percent of them, happen to be of one race?

If so, we are so screwed in the War on Terror.

Indiana

The Democrats are giving us a preview of their attack on Dan Coats. It’s pretty simple — just Dan Coats in his own words saying he’s packing up and moving to North Carolina.

Mike Huckabee is endorsing Marlin Stutzman.

Dan Coats finally released his financial disclosure. Turns out he did not just lobby for bailed out banks, but also the bailed out auto industry. Oh, and get this, he shows up with this on his disclosure. Is that not classic beltway nonsense — a bipartisan policy think tank where all the people convinced all the answers must come from Washington convene for martini fueled kumbaya sessions of mendacity about helping the little man they try so hard to fly over without ever touching?

Go Marlin.

Vegetarian Philosophers

So big thinkers don’t like the red meat being dished out on the right. Of course while asking us where we were for the Bush years of big spending, no one ever asks where they were when the left was calling him George Chimpy McBushitlerHalliburton. Most of them, by the way, were still in grammar school.

Everyone being attacked by the vegetarian philosophers is being so polite dancing around the core issue here. Smug 20 and 30 somethings who don’t relate well outside NY-DC-LA are not interesting, do not sell books, do not get TV talking head contracts, and generally hack people off by their inability to relate to anyone other than smug 20 and 30 somethings in NY-DC-LA who think they are cool because they like “drinking beers at Solly’s or Local 16 or The Big Hunt,” in one of these guy’s own words.

Parting Shot

You know what really hacks me off these days? Conservative activists of a certain sort. They show up at protests with their protest signs, but otherwise sit on the sidelines yelling.

I’m traveling all over God’s green earth these days training activists and have little sympathy for those who can’t take the time to get actual, factual training to be effective. Come on people, put down the protest signs and get involved in the process.

It’s time.

And now it is time for me to crawl back in bed and wait for my alarm clock to jump on my chest and tell me she wants Lucky Charms and Scooby Doo immediately.

Have a great day!