Fall out from the Hayes BlueNC blogpost

The day after I posted the Hayes story on the bluenc blog, things took off like a rocket.
BlueNC's website hits went from a daily average of 1300 to 38,000.
The story was picked up by numerous other blogs, HuffingtonPost and DailyKos probably being the biggest ones.
It was only a matter of time after that until the "regular" media caught wind of the story.
It made the Charlotte Observer twice and MSNBC reportedly interviewed Dale Cline, the publisher of the Concord Standard (if anyone can find video of this online, please let me know).
And finally my crowning achievement: Tom Delay's blog.

Meanwhile in the Hayes camp his spokeswoman (she's actually a girl in her early 20's), Carolyn Hern, said she did not attend the speech but that she has "no reason to doubt the accuracy of Hayes' initial quotes".

It's interesting how these bloggers can distort the news," Hern said.

If you can explain to me how publishing the exact quotes of someone (and they themselves saying those quotes are correct) is in any way distorting news, i'll buy you a beer.

When I first read the original story I immediately thought "this needs to be on CNN". I didn't quite make it, but hey, MSNBC ain't bad.
So next time you want to break a national news story, keep your eye on those newspaper vending machines when you're out for a walk!

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The one that started it all (aka Hayes goes nuts).

This is the one that started my "career" as a blogger. As I was walking around in downtown Concord my eye caught the front page of our local newspaper "the Concord Standard" in a vending machine. I couldn't believe what i was reading. Since I knew our local paper did not publish their stories online and only the few 1000 readers of this paper had access to this story, I decided I needed to bring this story to the world. I posted the story on bluenc. I couldn't foresee what would follow.

Robin Hayes has the solution to the Iraq war: have our soldiers convert all Muslims to Christianity.

Having won the election by only a hair’s width and almost getting himself kicked out of Congress seems to have had some profound psychological effects on poor Mr. Hayes. A speech that flip-floppin’ Robin gave last week at the Concord Rotary Club seems to prove he has finally gone off the deep end.

Our local weekly newspaper the “Concord Standard and Mount Pleasant Times” reported on Mr. Hayes speech in his hometown:

First there’s the usual talk of how we’re “winning” over there: “The war in Iraq has got to be won; it’s being won” (A couple of months ago Hayes said that the rise in violence in Iraq was an indication that we’re winning.)

Then comes the real kicker: “Stability in Iraq ultimately depends on spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth, good will towards men. Everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the Savior.”

So if we just turn our soldiers into missionaries everything will be okay, Mr. Hayes?

First we sent our men over there to take out the WMD’s, then it was to “spread democracy”, now you want them there to “spread the message of Jesus Christ”? It so happens that people in Iraq already have a savior but unfortunately for Mr. Hayes it’s Muhammed, not Jesus.

If we can’t keep Muslims from killing each other over there, I don’t think that trying to make them all Christian is going to be any easier.

With this kind of talk Hayes just plays into the hands of Al-Qaeda by confirming what their leaders have always been saying: those American soldiers are just modern Crusaders. He is thereby strengthening the beliefs of terrorists that want to kill every American soldier they come across.

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