For TB's American readers...

My Friend,

From the time I entered the Naval Academy at age seventeen I have been privileged and honored to serve my country.

Throughout my years of service, I've been faced with challenges where I could have taken the easy way out and given up. But I'm an American and I never give up. Instead, I choose to show courage and stand up and fight for the country I love. Today, I am asking you to stand with me and to fight for our country's future.

Our country faces enormous challenges and our next president must be ready to lead on day one. My lifetime of experience has prepared me to lead our great nation. I'm prepared to bring solutions to our economic challenges, bring our troops home in victory and improve our nation's healthcare system.

Time and time again, my country has saved my life and I owe her more than she has ever owed me. I have chosen to show my gratitude through a life of service to our country and tomorrow, you will have a choice before you.

I humbly ask you to make the choice that will allow me to serve my country a little while longer by casting your vote to elect me as your next President of the United States.

Finally, I ask that you never forget that much has been sacrificed to protect our right to vote. We must never forget those Americans who, with their courage, with their sacrifice, and with their lives, have protected our freedom. It is my great hope that you will exercise your right to vote as an American tomorrow.

I thank you for your kind support, your dedication to our cause, and most importantly I thank you for your vote.

With sincere appreciation,


John McCain

Why Home Secretaries turn into monsters...

The ever delectable Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

asked today

why Home Secretaries always turn into such monsters? It's a fair question and a good point and TB recommends that she checks out tonight's episode of

Spooks

to see what they have to put up with... A corker of the episode. TB is beginning to wonder about all those rogue gas explosions... Though this doesn't give Jaquai Smith the excuse to become the little dictator she has her heart set on being. ID cards won't save us... Spooks will!

Good to see Spooks have moved on from that horrible flirtation with leftyness and have got back to old fashioned Russian dissing.

Birmingham University CF endorses McCain

Seems another

campus branch

has endorsed the McCain/Palin ticket.

In a similar vote to Edinburgh University last week, the branch executive of Birmingham University Conservative Future are throwing their support behind not what is trendy and cool but what is the best for America and the world.

Hat-Tip-

The Young Conservative

- competition is healthy. In a way... still no link to torybear.com though - rather petty no?

Covering it live?

TB will be blogging through the night tomorrow but is anyone up for a liveblog chat from about midnight?

Happy to host one but only if there are people up for it...

Let yourself be known in the comments if you are interested.

The end is nigh...

Apologies for the lack of blogging in the last few days - TB has been busy with essays. Business resumes tomorrow with liveblogging throughout election night.

Tory Bear suggests that you check out the new

students4freedom

website and blog if you haven't already done so. Details of their upcoming conference can be found there. The world is going to be a very different place on Wednesday morning and groups like students4freedom are precisely what is going to be needed to defend against the rise of the new left. While it may start in America, don't forget for one second that Brown will try get as much of the Obama stardust to rub off on him as he can.

If you still think President Obama is a good idea then TB suggests you take a peek at this Samizdata

today

:

"Obama is a cipher. He is like a Russian matryoshka doll. Nobody except perhaps his closest associates know what is at the core. The best estimate is to look at his friends and mentors and what their values are. That topic has been thoroughly discussed and some reasonable people place him solidly in a group of hard core totalitarians. If we ignore his promises shifting like smoke on the wind, his closest core group seems to be fired by hatred and revenge against America in general and the US Constitution in particular. Certainly that is what his confidants and advisers (and wife) say in public."

"...already 43% of American 'tax payers' pay no taxes. We are getting dangerously close to the point where the people who net more off of government outnumber the people who pay more into it. If we cross that threshold of voters taking versus voters paying, it is a point of no return. It appears certain that we will pass that point early in an Obama administration."

This election has been going on so long it is hard to remember what watching the news or blogging was like without it. After the mammoth primary season scores of big names have fallen by the wayside - careers and dreams shattered and billions of dollars poured in to the worlds most elaborate smoke and mirrors. Our elections pale in comparison to the excitement and depth of a US race and although TB fully expects to be drowning his sorrows come about 5am when the Mac finally throws in the towel (and Mrs Palin is sent back from whence she came,) it's been one hell of a ride...

The only comfort left is that great quote from his RNC nomination speech, is their a glimmer of hope?



"Nothing is inevitable here, we're Americans, we never give up, we never quit. We never hide from history -we make history. Stand up and fight"

A report from the stump...

TB is rather jealous of the YBF team who are out in the states campaigning for McCain Palin...

TB tried his utmost to get out there but the old degree had to come first sadly. They even got to see Arnie and the Mac at a rally in Ohio...

The sunday press was a sickening read of pro-messiah adoration.



Is it too late to stop?

With a heavy heart TB has to conclude yes he can.

Vote McCain or...

...Arnie will be knocking on your door.



"Barack Obama can't do anything about his skinny legs and scrawny arms but he really should put some meat on his policies... John McCain has served his country longer in a PoW camp than Barack Obama has served in the Senate...

I play an action hero, John McCain is an action hero...

America cannot afford Barack Obama - just as Europe is rolling back its 'spread the wealth ' policies we don't need them in America..."

Hat-Tip ConHome

The last word on the Osborne donation saga...

Congratulations to

Donal Blaney

who has

scalped

Raf Sanchez the editor of York University's left wing campus rag "Nouse" over the

illegal donation

scandal to the Obama campaign.

What TB found interesting was the Labour PPC's (whose idea the fundraiser was,) response:

"In a joint statement Hazelgrove and Sanchez said: “As far as we know it is not a crime to have a bad idea and then not act on it in either this country or the United States. No money was exchanged and none will be. Nor did we solicit, it was just an idea we decided against.”

Hazelgrove remains a parliamentary candidate. At the time of going to print, Sanchez is understood to be preparing to resign from his editorial post."

"As far as we know it is not a crime to have a bad idea and then not act on it." For all the stink that Labour kicked up over the Osborne donation nonstory, it's nice to know that the Labour grassroots are on the Shadow Chancellors side and agree with his defence.

The nouse is tightening on Hazelgrove...

haha sorry TB couldn't resist that last line

Exeter beach party

Last week TB did a small call to arms to start sending in video content of what Conservative Future is up to around the country. You can watch the video in the TBtv player on the right. Keep sending TB your stuff...
Exeter CF have sent this video in talking about their recent Sex on the Beach club night that apparently saw over 300 attending. That is damn good for any campus event and the organisers discuss it in the video below...

However TB has just one recommendation... It might be wise to tag the video with some slightly more umm respectable content because at the moment, as you can see below YouTube has jumped to some conclusions:

Click to enlarge

This sort of thing has happened before. Joking apart it sounds like the event was a storming success and similar events should be put on across the country. It's nights like this that show just how much of a force CF has become on campuses across the country and no doubt made the branch a hefty bit of cash...

The final push...

TB was rather chuffed with the American blogs that linked to his remix of John McCain's stand up and fight speech. However that was a couple of months back and he was beginning to think no one was listening to it in the run up to the big day...

Until he saw this on his Messenger contact list:

For those of you that missed the tune you can watch it below or download the MP3 here.



Send it on to your McCain supporting comrades across the pond... They need all the help they can get for that final fight.

Nottingham says No.

TB understands that Nottingham University has begun a disaffiliation campaign from the NUS. It is not clear at this point if CF are involved but no doubt they will enter the fray in what is set to become a pitched campus battle.

Conservative Future are big players in Nottingham and as far as TB can tell the student population has a strong right of centre base. The last time a disaffliation campaign was run (by CFer Edward Keene,) the union staff were very worried it would pass...

This could get interesting...

Social Action saves the world...

Just when Tory Bear thought that the CF gossip had gone a bit quiet recently, news of a new super exciting, super secret, super project has just reached TBHQ...

TB understands that Conservative Future will be recording a special version of "Do They Know it's Christmas?" and continuing the style of this year's fresher recruitment material, special t-shirts have been ordered for the fundraising event for the mysterious project.

This is all hush hush of course because apparently no one wants to make it obvious that this is a CF project for fear of putting off members of the Shadow Cabinet from singing on the track. Apparently the whole thing is effectively being distanced from the whole Party, so TB can't really see who is going to come out looking all glossy from this. other than the specific people organising it. It's almost as if they are just in it for personal aggrandisement...

TB is not sure at this point whether Bob Geldof is involved yet.

New CF website under development...

TB has heard that Conservative Future will finally get a new website that is currently under construction. For months now the good aspects of the

executive blog

have far exceeded the poor official

.com

site.

The site needs to be updated reguarly, not only with news but pictures, video and interactive content too. And please no more pictures like this...

Anyone going to the current official CF site can't be blamed for saying no thanks...

Another great idea from Obama...

Obama is really pulling out all the stops to show his economic credentials in the final week of this campaign. In these times of economic downturn and faltering markets, small businesses are really feeling the full force of these declines.



Is it really a good idea then to encourage a mass movement to pull sickies on election day? Say

two million

sheep were to blindly follow the messiahs word then the US economy would be hit by a $300 million doller loss. Great idea.

Let's put this idiot in the White House.

What's up with Jon Craig?

The Sky News political team are normally very neutral, bordering on friendly to the Party. Apart from the odd blip of pissing off Dave in the early days they are on the whole a good bunch.

What has happened though today to Jon Craig? Firstly he

laid into

George Osborne this morning, giving him a solid kicking while he was down and dog whistling the class card with a dig at his full name. Then this evening he actually slipped the words

"tory toff"

into a piece in all seriousness. He seems to have it in for Osborne especially at the moment and generally seems to be leading the media in turning on the tories.

Has Mandy found a little friend to whisper to at Sky?

Guest Post - YBF

TB caught up this morning with Christian May from the Young Britons' Foundation who offers this insight into their 5th annual conference at the weekend.

This year's YBF5 was the best yet. Nearly 100 activists (including three former National CF Chairs, a host of seasoned CF activists and loads of new faces) were joined at Wellington College by leading figures from the Conservative Party and the wider conservative movement. Highlights included:

- David Davis talking about the importance of freedom and liberty

- Iain Duncan Smith passionately reminding us why social justice is a conservative priority

- John Whittingdale OBE MP talking about his memories of the Thatcher years at the Eric Forth Memorial Dinner

- Douglas Murray delivering his chilling assessment of the state of the world

- Eric Pickles talking frankly about public sector language - apparently the only stakeholder he has any time for is Van Helsing

- Iain Dale's media training

- Matt Richardson, of YBF's Legal Support and Advice Unit, talking about how YBF's legal team can help you out on campus.

- Ed Vaizey stressing the importance of 'appearing normal' to the public

- Nigel Evans reminding us to never, ever give up

Feedback from the attendees has been really encouraging - showing not only an increase in support for YBF but for conservative politics amongst the youth in general. Here's a sample of the comments:

"My impression of YBF has very much improved - I am now an evangelist!"

"I love you guys!"

"YBF is going from strength to strength."

"My impression has really improved - morale here is brilliant."

"This was my first YBF event so I had no idea how organised YBF would be. Having been here for the weekend I can say I'm really impressed."

"I've always had a high opinion of YBF but it has improved due to the high quality of the whole conference."

"I'm inspired. Very impressive speakers, friendly people and great fun."

"I had very little knowledge of YBF before this weekend, but have been hugely impressed by its ethos and the work that it does."

"The conference exceeded all expectations - the speakers were brilliant."
"I'm new to YBF so wasn't sure what to expect, but I've got a lot out of it and have really enjoyed it."

There was also a lot of interest in YBF's Summer 2009 USA Conference Tour. Details of this are to follow.

Donal and I would like to thank all those that attended and helped to make this weekend the success that it was. Plans are now coming together for YBF's Christmas Party. Watch this space.

A monday morning treat...

Look what Tory Bear managed to dig up to brighten up your day...



A true gem... IDS and Peter Stringfellow... That conference speech... Action Abercorn!

Truly a piece of Conservative history...

Friends in high places...

Not everyone seems to have descended on Wellington this weekend for the YBF gig, it seems Conservative Future's rebel alliance had talking to do with a certain someone...

It's great to see CF throwing their weight behind George Osborne in the wake of last weeks non-story and completely stage managed declaration of war. Despite dealing with the Dark Lord Mandleson on a daily basis and being Shadow Chancellor, George stopped to chat about the inner workings of Conservative Future with two of it's executive. Chairmanship elections, CF's success and possibly even a whisper of reforms that which will not be named was overheard by TB's ear at the Tatton Association dinner.

Osborne apparently still keeps a membership card in his wallet that was given to him by the CFer who founded his fan club. It's fantastic news to know that despite the moaning that CF isn't taken seriously enough by CCHQ, the top of the party, or at least very very close to it, still keeps enough of an eye on us to be able to hold a detailed conversation. This weekend has proved the high figures in the Party and the movement are taking young conservatives seriously, not just at the YBF conference but around the country, and now the ball is in our court. CF has potentially 18 months to the general election and needs to whip itself into shape and build the ground army, Obama style, to teach the doubters in the party one hell of a lesson...

TB is not sure if £50,000 was solicited from Mr Patrick Sullivanovitz...

The Eric Forth Award

Congratulations to Matt Sinclair and Mark Wallace who won the

YBF Eric Forth Award

this year. Their fantastic work for the

Tax Payers' Alliance

is outstanding and their work for the movement is second to none.

By all accounts the YBF5 conference was a roaring success...

TB is very sad he couldn't be there.

The coolest barn ever?

TB is tired after a great weekend of canvassing and the campaign launch party last night in Perth and North Perthshire...

Tory Bear wants the banner...