SO LEFTIES COMPARE ROMNEY TO THURSTON HOWELL. But Obama’s more like Gilligan — the skinny guy with big ears who screws things up every time it looks like they’re going to be rescued. Kinda like he’s done with the economy . . . .
UPDATE: Via reader Kathleen Acton, the inevitable:
The resemblance is strong.
PROGRESS: This Robot Could Transform Manufacturing. I for one welcome our new robot employees. Er, until they start wanting to blog or teach law, anyway.
MICHAEL TOTTEN: “Egypt is looking more like post-1979 Iran every day.” “Cairo has issued international arrest warrants for eight Americans—seven of them Coptic Christians from Egypt—who are allegedly involved with the anti-Mohammad video everyone’s rioting over. The prosecutor’s office also issued a warrant for Terry Jones, the Koran-burning nutjob in Florida, just because, and says if convicted the defendants may get the death penalty.”
I’m beginning to think that Obama’s Egypt policy isn’t working out.
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Romney Defends Leaked Comments, Hits Obama For 1998 “Redistribution” Line.
Related: Barack Obama: “I actually believe in redistribution.”
UPDATE: CNBC And Yahoo Finance Readers REALLY Liked Mitt Romney’s Comments.
Watch this “campaign-changing gaffe” become a nonstory as soon as the press decides it’s hurting Obama instead of helping him.
SINCE JAMES O’KEEFE WASN’T INVOLVED, DON’T EXPECT THIS TO GET A LOT OF PRESS ATTENTION: Secret Romney Videotaping May Have Been Illegal.
LEADERSHIP: Obama Loses Key Dems On Tax Hike Threat.
IN CHINA, the disturbing phenomenon of “ghost steel.” Does Tom Friedman know about this?
AT AMAZON, a new collection of 100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or less.
NLRB GENERAL COUNSEL IN ETHICAL TROUBLE: Who could have seen that coming?
THE WORLD’S FIRST COLOR FILM FOOTAGE, viewed for the first time.
COLOR ME SKEPTICAL: L.A. To Become America’s Next Great Mass-Transit City. And bikes aren’t “transit” — or, if they are, then cars are transit too. On the other hand, this makes sense: “Something like a nine-minute wait for a bus, a 15-minute walk to your destination, or an afternoon bike ride are all more pleasant in Southern California than in a Boston winter or a sweltering Washington August. As a quirk of fate, the East Coast of the United States was settled first, so cities with large pre-automobile urban cores are clustered there. But the fundamentals of climate and terrain are more favorable to walking and transit in Los Angeles than in New York.”
READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Mark Beech writes: “I’m an editor and a writer at Sports Illustrated, as well as a second-generation West Point graduate, and I’m hoping for a shameless reader book plug for tomorrow. My book, When Saturday Mattered Most: The Last Golden Season of Army Football, comes out today (Sept. 18). It’s all about Red Blaik, Pete Dawkins, the Lonely End and the last undefeated Army football team.”
Done. Gotta respect ’em.
READER BOOK UPDATE: So I’m partway through (19% according to Kindle) reader Jay Vail’s Lone Star Rising: The Voyage Of The Wasp, and so far I’m finding it quite engaging. Some others have written me to say likewise.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why I Don’t Have Pubic Hair.
FROM CRONY CAPITALISM TO CRONY JOURNALISM: Emails reveal Justice Dept. regularly enlists Media Matters to spin press.
Related: J. Christian Adams: More on Eric Holder’s Flying Monkeys at Media Matters. “All of this raises an important question: how did the United States Department of Justice become so intertwined with one of the most venomous, dishonest, and radical Websites? Back in 2008, we heard so much empty rhetoric from one campaign about how they would take politics out of the Justice Department. Like so much from that camp, time reveals it was all projection. They have engaged in a level of raw politics that their GOP opponents couldn’t even conceive of.”
POLL: Romney’s Right: Voters Want Smaller Government. “Gallup reports that, by a 54 percent to 39 percent margin, voters think government is trying to do too much, as opposed to not doing enough.”
YA THINK? Walter Russell Mead: “None of President Obama’s big policies in the Middle East have worked out as he hoped. That whole ‘fix the peace process by pushing the Israelis’ thing turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. Coming into office, President Obama was sure he’d be able to straighten this out; he’s been the least effective president in terms of the Arab-Israeli relationship since Kissinger launched his shuttle diplomacy back in the Nixon administration and his ill-considered approach achieved the unusual result of angering both sides.” I believe we’re supposed to call this “smart diplomacy.”
RICHARD EPSTEIN: John Locke’s Lesson For The Arab World.
IN THE MAIL: The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D):
Related: Obama’s Leadership Vacuum.
UPDATE: Investor’s Business Daily: An Unserious President In Seriously Perilous Times. “The Mideast is in turmoil, the economy is faltering and the president opts to spend precious time with David Letterman, Beyonce and Jay-Z. Are we the only ones to wonder if Obama’s suited to be president?”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Barack Obama Cannot Be Serious. “If Barack Obama consciously intended to demonstrate his contempt for this constitutional republic and its citizens—and who knows, maybe he does—he couldn’t do it any more dramatically than tomorrow night’s event. Think about it. Just a few days after trying to deprive a man no one had ever heard of from enjoying his free-speech rights because some foreigners claim they were offended, the President of the United States flies off to party with another man who’s earned a pasha’s fortune exercising his own free-speech rights with language that offends many more Americans than not.”
MORE: Reader Michael Wallace writes:
Thanks Glenn. That is an ad that simply writes itself.. . Mitt calling out BO for attending the event, then Mitt reading a few of these lyrics, then looking into the camera saying, as your President I will not associate with people who write and sing such stuff. Doing so is beneath the dignity of the office.
Of course, one could say the same thing about Bill Ayers, or J Wright or a member of the Muslim Brotherhood — gosh the list goes on, doesn’t it?
Yes. Although MSNBC would just edit out the context and run a story about Romney’s uncontrollable cursing.
THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN SEEMS TO HAVE HIT UPON A STRATEGY OF TELLING THE TRUTH: Palestinians Have No Interest In Peace. It’s an idea so crazy it just might work!
Say, where’s that Obama/Khalidi tape? Why won’t the L.A.Times release it? Oh, who am I kidding? They won’t release it because it would make Obama look terrible. What other reason can there be?
UPDATE: Reader Kevin Murphy writes: “The Tribune Company, which owns the LA Times, is still in Chapter 11. Suppose the Romney campaign (or Romney himself) offered the receiver $10 million for the tape. Could they refuse?” I’m sure they’d find a way to stall until November. It would have to be an exploding offer — with a one-week deadline or something. Then failure to take it might be a breach of duty.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Mark Reardon writes: “This sounds like a Kickstarter crowdsourcing opportunity to me. I’ve got fifty bucks that desperately need to be spent on bills that I’d pitch in.”
ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS MARK STEYN, about the paperback edition of his After America, which is now out.
A SMALL AMOUNT OF MEDIA ATTENTION for the Obama-Bernanke war on seniors. “Along with keeping rates low, governments are using a variety of tactics to encourage captive audiences, like pension funds and banks, to buy their debt. Consumers, in other words, are subtly subsidizing governments without even knowing it. Economists have compared this phenomenon to a hidden tax on people’s wealth.”
Note the stories of senior citizens having to go back to work because of low interest rates. That’s been the topic of some of my recent writing.
It’s interesting to me that we’re not hearing more from the AARP on this subject. There’s this from a couple of years ago, but you’d expect them to be shouting to the rooftops this close to an election. Well, you’d expect that unless you’d been paying attention, I guess.
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