Archive for 2012
October 10, 2012
HEY, TEA PARTY: YOU KNOW YOU’RE ON TOP WHEN EVERYONE IS TRYING TO TAKE YOUR PLACE: The tea party has been so successful in getting members of Congress elected that those members are now attracting specific, intensified opposition by labor and other progressive groups afraid of growing tea party prominence and power. Says Greg Sargent over at the Washington Post Plum Line:
Despite a surge of optimism a few weeks back, Democrats appear likely to fall short of winning back the House. But progressives are hoping that by knocking off a few prize Tea Partyers, they will help fuel the narrative that the Tea Party is on the wane.
Yeah, good luck with that narrative!
JOE BIDEN DEBATE PREP: This pic pretty much sums it up:
THEY DON’T WANT IT OUT BEFORE THE ELECTION: Andrew Breitbart Documentary Release Delayed Over Rating War With MPAA. I saw a screening last night, and if I were a shill for Obama — as the MPAA is — then I wouldn’t want this in theaters before the election either.
UPDATE: Michael Walsh emails: “Interesting, isn’t it, that head of MPAA is now… ta-da! Chris Dodd.”
MAYBE REWARDING SENIOR EXECS FOR SPENDING MORE TELLS US SOMETHING ABOUT WHY WASHINGTON SPENDING IS OUT OF CONTROL? More revelations from The Washington Examiner about the Department of Veterans Affairs, a federal bureaucracy with a management culture structured to spend as many tax dollars as possible. Meanwhile, nearly a million vets’ health and disability claims go unfinished for more than four months!
NO “ISOLATED INCIDENT” HERE: BREAKING: Double boom! Second O’Keefe video shows OFA aiding voter fraud in multiple states.
SO MANY WERE IN CONTENTION: PJ Media and The New Criterion Announce Winners of Inaugural Walter Duranty Prize For Journalistic Mendacity. Andrew Sullivan will be devastated that he’s only Second Runner-Up. Still, it’s a dishonor just to be nominated.
HOW YOU CAN TELL THE BENGHAZI STORY IS HURTING OBAMA: Administration Lashes Out At Republicans for “Politicizing” the Attacks in Libya. “And let’s not pretend nobody in the Obama administration got political with this by trying to portray a dishonest narrative downplaying the true motives behind the attack. Blaming the entire thing on some stupid video was an embarrassing ploy designed to depict to voters that Barack Obama’s policies in the Middle East have been more successful mitigating terrorist influences than they actually have, and the administration’s inability to keep its story even remotely straight suggests that there was perhaps a little more on their minds than only U.S. security interests. Sure, everybody wants to get to the bottom of this — but the Obama administration also has a very vested interest in misdirecting voters’ attention away from their foreign-policy failures, more so now than ever.”
WINTER IS COMING: Fall Deals on Athletic and Outdoor Clothing.
Also, today only: Up to 70% off Select Pogoplug Backup Devices. (Bumped).
TWO REUTERS IN ONE: Here’s James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web column on September 24th, 2001:
Stephen Jukes, global news editor for Reuters, the British wire service, has ordered his scribes not to use the word terror to refer to the Sept. 11 atrocity, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reports (second item). “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist,” Jukes writes in an internal memo. “To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack.”
Flash-forward to today: “Reuters Reporter, In Essence: Today’s Republican Are Pro-Slavery and Are Rarely Tagged as ‘Radicals,'” as spotted by Tom Blumer at Newsbusters.
But how can Reuters think evil of them, when Republicans are frequently compared to terrorists by the left? (One example of that Mobius Loop may be ridden here.)
COFFEE: Is there anything it can’t do? “Recent studies have linked caffeine consumption to a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and a new University of Illinois study may be able to explain how this happens.”
MORE ON THE BENGHAZI DEBACLE, FROM THE BBC:
On Tuesday, anonymous state department officials told reporters that the US government had never concluded the sacking of the Benghazi mission was motivated by a US-made video ridiculing Muslims.
They said it was instead a co-ordinated assault involving several groups of men armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades over an expanse of more than a mile.
The 11 September Benghazi assault, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others died, was unprecedented in recent diplomatic history, officials added.
However, in the days after the attack Mr Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, initially described it as a “spontaneous” one that arose out of a protest against the film.
As Mickey Kaus and Walter Russell Mead have noted, this storyline was in support of the Administration’s desire to (1) declare victory in the War On Terror (Osama is Dead!) and (2) to support defense cuts and a “pivot to asia.” Too bad it was all a lie.
Related: House Hearing on Benghazi Already Getting Answers.
UPDATE: Shameful: During Libya hearing, Rep. Cummings can’t remember Ambassador Stevens’ name. Hey, there’s no IQ test for members of Congress. . . .
THE STATE DEPARTMENT disowns Ambassador Susan Rice’s Libya narrative. That needed to happen. It has been obvious all along that her explanation of what happened in Benghazi last month was completely unfounded and preposterous.
CHRISTIAN ADAMS: “The new O’Keefe video raises the question – how many other undercover videographers have penetrated the Obama campaign? O’Keefe obviously reached the heart of one operation. Who knows how many more Obama campaign offices are full of ‘volunteers’ on the lookout for criminal behavior by other Obama campaign staffers?”
Hey, remember Breitbart telling John Podesta “wherever you go, we’ll have a video camera?” And Adams — an expert voting-rights lawyer who until recently worked at the Justice Department — has a lot more on the illegalities involved, and on the background of the Obama staffer nailed here. The press will try to minimize it, but this is a big story. “This paid Obama staffer is a radical’s radical. She was active in the Students for a Democratic Society in Houston. The most shocking thing about that is that the SDS still exists. The second most shocking thing is that someone from this leftover Marxist organization would be a paid staffer with the DNC. I’ll bet that didn’t happen on Bill Clinton and Don Fowler’s watch. . . . Now we have yet another reason to explain why some Democrats so aggressively oppose election integrity efforts and accuse election integrity watchdogs of phony ‘voter suppression.’ They don’t want anyone, it seems, to know what they are really up to.”
The thing is, you’re supposed to “suppress” illegal voting. (I had linked this earlier in passing, but it’s a big story that deserves more detailed treatment.)
JACK WELCH: I Was Right About That Strange Jobs Report. “Imagine a country where challenging the ruling authorities—questioning, say, a piece of data released by central headquarters—would result in mobs of administration sympathizers claiming you should feel ’embarrassed’ and labeling you a fool, or worse. Soviet Russia perhaps? Communist China? Nope, that would be the United States right now. . . . The Obama campaign and its supporters, including bigwigs like David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, along with several cable TV anchors, would like you to believe that BLS data are handled like the gold in Fort Knox, with gun-carrying guards watching their every move, and highly trained, white-gloved super-agents counting and recounting hourly. Let’s get real. ”
If people don’t trust the Administration’s honesty and professionalism, well, there’s reason. Hell, at this point, I’d like to see an audit of Fort Knox. . . .
Related item here.
THE MIDDLE EAST WILL ALWAYS BE INTERESTING: The Free Syrian Army threatens to take its fight to Hezbollah in its stronghold south of Beirut.
INVISIBILITY WAR: Russian-Made Tech Vs. America’s Stealth Warplanes. “For the past 30 years stealth technology has helped American warplanes maintain air dominance around the globe. Now Russian firms are designing and selling weapons they claim can shoot down the most sophisticated aircraft ever built.”
People who have relied on Russian anti-aircraft technology over the last couple of decades haven’t done especially well.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Want a Discount on the iPhone 5? Wait 4 Months for a Refurbished Deal.
OBAMACARE FUN FACT #3: Under section 4203 of the Affordable Care Act, all medical diagnostic equipment used by physicians, hospitals and other health care providers–e.g., ex-rays, exam tables, exam chairs, mammography equipment, MRIs, etc.– must be equipment that is “accessible to, and usable by, individuals with accessibility needs, and shall allow independent entry to, use of, and exit from the equipment by such individuals to the maximum extent possible.”
While I think we can all agree that this is a nice goal, is it really appropriate to mandate this, in this economy, regardless of its cost? Price tag: Unknown.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Kindle Daily Deal.
I DIDN’T HEAR IT, but I’m told that Rush Limbaugh was quoting Ann Althouse’s theory on why Obama supporters chose to emphasize Obama’s poor performance rather than Romney’s good one:
Here’s why they did it. Romney was so much better than Obama. Romney was vigorous, vividly in command of the facts, principles of economics, free-market ideology. Like Obama, he had a strategy to appeal to moderates, and he jumped into the moderate ground and occupied it — stunningly — with modesty and charm. He radiated competence and readiness to work for us. There he stood, the brilliant candidate, who wants only to help us, knows how to help us, and deeply, passionately cares that we need help. Wow.
Don’t let that be the story! Don’t look at that! Look at pathetic woeful Obama. He was off his game. That’s not good for Obama — as his drop in the polls shows — but it was better than the alternative: talking about how Romney dramatically topped the President — the President, who came to the debate with all the gravitas of the presidency and all the knowledge and understanding that he has through working as the President these last 4 years.
The meme The Bad Obama was — colluding pundits decided — preferable to The Great Romney.
Makes sense.
NOT BACKING DOWN: Jack Welch Responds to critics.