HE WOULDN’T BUILD THAT: “Procrastinator in chief avoids debate prep, visits Hoover Dam instead,” Twitchy notes today, quoting (among others), a Tweet with a press pool photo from Mark Knoller of CBS who writes, “Pres Obama (center) admires the engineering feat that is the Hoover Dam.”

Which seems an odd destination for Obama, considering that, as Joel Kotkin noted in a 2010 article titled “How Liberalism self-destructed” at the Politico, “Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Deanna Archuleta, for example, promised a Las Vegas audience: ‘You will never see another federal dam.'”

As Kotkin wrote at the time, “Harold Ickes, FDR’s enterprising interior secretary, must be turning over in his grave.”

MSNBC is for-gainst the idea of new dams, but American Express have put their corporate imprimatur on their elimination.

BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY:

Yup, the Republicans are the racist ones. Not the party saying “Sure, the country’s a mess, he broke all his promises, we’re at war with even more countries than before, but at least he’s black.”

Heh.

SO IN RESPONSE TO THE NEW OBAMA VIDEO DROP, one establishment political journalist tells me it’s no big deal because everyone knows Obama’s a big lefty, talks blacker when with black audiences, etc., etc.

But the thing is, in 2004-2008, Obama sold himself as a black guy who wasn’t in the mold of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. So when he sounds like that, it’s a contradiction. You know, the kind of hypocrisy the press usually goes after in politicians. Unless, as with Obama, the press is trying to drag them across the finish line. Because there’s no way they’re going to let Obama be a one-termer, when the hated W got two. . . .

UPDATE: Charlie Spiering quotes Obama: “We won’t forget what happened 19 months ago, or 15 years ago, or 300 years ago.”

And here I thought his slogan was Forward! Not, you know, Forward, into the past!

ANOTHER UPDATE: DNC Scrambles To Deflate Obama Video: “The Democratic National Committee — armed with the help of dismissive tweets from a variety of journalists — scrambled Tuesday night to attack The Daily Caller for its videos of President Obama’s controversial race comments in 2007 before the story was even published.”

Journalists? Or Democratic operatives with bylines? You decide.

MORE: Paul Mirengoff: Obama slandered America as racist using dishonest claims about the response to Hurricane Katrina.

WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT? Hearing? Or Seeing?

I QUESTION THE TIMING: Hillary to Issa: You should reserve judgment about Benghazi until … November.

OBSERVATION CAN BECOME AN INTERVENTION: Andrew Ferguson’s “Press Man” back page column at Commentary is always my first read when the new issue arrives each month. I believe his newest column is currently behind the subscriber paywall, but he makes a great observation in the excerpt below, beginning with a riff on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle:

Heisenberg’s principle can be crudely generalized (it’s the best I can do) as follows: An observer can change the nature of a thing or an event merely through the act of observation. Observation all by itself can become an intervention. Heisenberg was describing how reality works at the level of quantum mechanics, where a wave becomes a particle and vice versa depending on how it’s being measured. But it applies, too, at the level of political journalism, where reality is even stranger. There, facts can become interpretations, interpretations can become facts, and events of no significance can achieve an earthshaking importance simply by virtue of being pawed over by a large number of journalists.

A typical journalist, if he’s any good, insists at least theoretically on the iron divide between observer and participant. At its best the press corps sees itself as a squadron of Red Cross workers, wandering among the combatants in a battle zone and ensuring their own safety with a claim of strict neutrality. The Heisenberg Principle of Journalism puts the lie to all that. You see it at work whenever a news anchor announces that “this story just refuses to go away” or a headline writer insists that “questions continue to be raised” about the conduct of one hapless public figure or another.

The story refuses to go away, of course, because the anchor and his colleagues won’t let it; and the questions that continue to be raised are being raised by the headline writer and his editors. Reporters create more news than anybody, just by pretending they’re watching it unfold.

And the reverse is true as well:

• A presidential candidate calls for bankrupting entire industry? Let’s ignore it in plain sight.

• A presidential candidate call for higher energy prices for all Americans, especially the poor? Capital idea, we agree! But on the whole, let’s ignore it in plain sight.

• A presidential candidate has spent years marinating in a radical chic background? Let’s ignore it in plain sight.

• The Middle East is in tatters as a result of an administration asleep at the wheel? Let’s ignore it in plain sight.

• A border agent killed and guns in the hands of Mexican criminals? Let’s ignore it in plain sight.

• An incendiary racially-charged speech involving the man who is now the president of the United States emerges that 99 percent of the general public hasn’t seen? Old news.  Let’s ignore it in plain sight.

For decades, the establishment media has been in the tank for the left — to the point where Bill Clinton was paraphrased by the Washington Post in 2006 as saying, “There is an expectation among Democrats that establishment old media organizations are de facto allies.”

But both halves of the equation used to be better at going through the motions of pretending about the nation’s welfare.

Or to put it another way, as the Washington Examiner notes tonight in an editorial, “To believe Obama is to forget the last four years.” That’s what both the Obama Administration and their palace guard are hoping.

UPDATE: I’ve cross-posted, in slightly modified form, the above post at Ed Driscoll.com, if you want to comment on the Daily Caller’s video drop.

OBAMA’S OTHER RACE SPEECH, as Matt Drudge describes it, is now online at the Daily Caller.

UPDATE: At the Tatler, Bryan Preston writes, “Simply put, Barack Obama was and still is Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s most studious and successful disciple.”

And if you missed it on Fox News earlier tonight, clips of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity’s discussion of the above video are now online at YouTube.

REPORT: The Coolest Stuff at New York Maker Faire 2012.

OBAMA’S LADY PARTS: “Imagine if the sexes were reversed: Vote like your manhood depends on it… because it kinda does.”

Related: When Progressive gets regressive. “As we’re reminded throughout the video, these ladies’ authority seems to rest on the fact that they are actual women. Well, so I am, so let’s get real: There is nothing more unempowering to women, or just people in general, than the attitude that a big government needs to nanny our decisions and pay for all of our wants and needs. Notice how this ad tries to make it seem like Romney & company are the ones who would get the government more involved in our lives, when actually, the exact opposite is true.”

More and more, liberalism seems founded on female sexual insecurity. If these women were that confident in their vaginas, they wouldn’t be talking about them all the time, and worrying about protecting them from those big, bad Republicans. . . .

UPDATE: Meanwhile, it’s the women in Obama foreign-aid recipient Egypt who have reason to worry.

TOO FAR AHEAD OF THE CURVE? Hyundai fuel cell chief says EV makers jumped the gun.

Related: Senator Blutarsky analyzes the Chevy Volt’s economics.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Mysteries, Thrillers & Suspense.

MORE BENSMITHING OF DRUDGE/DAILY CALLER VIDEO: “Time magazine’s Mark Halperin is all stompy foot. Well, stompy lapdog paws.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON BUSINESS EXPERIENCE: It’s Not Crazy To Worry That Obama Hasn’t Got It. “Why are filthy-rich hedge fund managers, so enamored of Obama in the 2008 race, turning on him now? I endorse the rhetorical explanation: Barack Obama has made a habit of bashing financial types and rich people. Bankers and rich people, being people, do not like being treated as villains in Obama’s campaign set pieces. So they are naturally disinclined to support him. I am shocked at how many New Yorkers I had thought to be rock-ribbed Democrats are attending Romney fundraisers. Not a huge number, mind you; it’s not like they’re going to tip New York from blue to red. But if any New Yorkers of my acquaintance were attending GOP fundraisers in the past, they certainly weren’t admitting it in public, unless they already worked for National Review. So it does seem like a real change . . . and what they say when I ask them is that, well, they don’t like being treated as villains in Obama’s campaign set pieces. Felix Salmon, however, offers a different view. . . . Of course, we’ve had many good presidents with no business experience. But Obama’s whole administration tends to be light on people from outside the academia–NGO–government triangle. It’s something that’s increasingly true of Washington in general–and, I think, increasingly problematic. . . . The increasingly mandarin elite, hygienically removed from the grubby business of scrounging for customers, frequently seems to have no idea at all what goes on in companies. . . . The purpose of an elite education, the thinking goes, is to equip you to design and run the system by which 300 million Americans live together–and to ensure that you never, ever have to actually interact with the 280 million who did not graduate from an elite academic program.”

As usual, it all comes down to oikophobia.

DRUDGE TEASES ‘CAMPAIGN DRAMA’ TAPE TO DROP TONIGHT, Bryan Preston writes at the Tatler. Latest headline at Drudge — complete with the gumball light: “FOXNEWS TONIGHT: OBAMA’S OTHER RACE SPEECH —   THE ACCENT… THE ANGER… THE ACCUSATIONS…”

UPDATE (6:10 PM EDT): The Freepers have been speculating wildly about this, ever since Drudge first teased the story over an hour ago, and commenting early on that Sean Hannity has also been hyping the story. At Hot Air, Allahpundit confirms:

It’ll air on Hannity’s show. The teaser on his site: “It’s a bombshell video that you will only see tonight on ‘Hannity,’ and it’s one that could dramatically impact the race for the White House”.

And now up on Drudge: “THE SHOUT OUT TO REV. WRIGHT, WHO IS IN AUDIENCE…”

So — who’s up for three more hours of Drudge teases in the interim?

Incidentally — I wonder if the screen capture of Obama pounding a podium currently on Drudge is enough to let the BenSmithing begin?

MORE: The BenSmithing has indeed begun. Though John Nolte tweets, “The vid BenSmither @BuzzFeedAndrew posted is heavily edited and doesn’t contain what Drudge is teasing.”

Tucker Carlson adds, “The video in question, not the edited YouTube version, will be on The Daily Caller at 9:00 pm Eastern.”

(Bumped to top.)

GENDER AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT: Might not be STRICTLY true.

REVOLUTIONIZING VIDEO CONFERENCING: Beam Yourself Anywhere. “Technically, the Beam is not a robot because it requires a remote operator. Still, Hassan thinks it will help people get used to the idea of automated creatures moving around the home and office.” Sorry, I’m still thinking of Sheldon Cooper.

CHEAP AND TASTY INFERTILITY TREATMENT: if the problem is sperm quality.  At least if you can eat walnuts.

THEY CAN HAVE MY CHOCOLATE WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY STICKY FINGERS: Chocolate Gorging Linked To Opium Chemical In The Brain.  (Great.  Bet you NYC goes after this next!)

THE FIVE CREEPIEST TOWNS IN AMERICA.

WHAT AMERICA NEEDS: Halloween Costumes . . . For Dogs. “Sales of pet costumes, though still relatively small, are the industry’s fastest-growing area. They’re up double-digits the past three years in a row at Rubie’s Costume, says Howard Beige, executive vice president.”

EMILY SMITH: Piss Christ, “Art,” and Violence.

TELEGRAPH: Did the White House order a cover-up over the murder of Libya’s US Ambassador?

GOT (LACTOSE FREE) MILK? THIS GENETICALLY ENGINEERED COW DOES:  Scientists in New Zealand have genetically engineered a cow, Daisy, who produces lactose-free milk.  They used a combination of cloning  and RNA interference techniques to produce 57 cow embryos.  Of the implanted embryos, only 4 pregnancies and one birth (Daisy) resulted.  Daisy was born without a tail.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’d pass on drinking Daisy’s milk.

SCOTT BROWN “BAINS” ELIZABETH WARREN: “Elizabeth Warren is running hard left in her rhetoric, but the reality is she served big companies in her extensive private legal practice and got paid big, big dollars for it. . . . That’s where the lastest Brown ad about Warren’s representation of LTV Coal comes in. The ad has the feel of the anti-Bain ads run against Mitt Romney. This fits with Brown’s overall strategy of peeling off union workers from the union bosses who are in the tank for each and every Democrat. It’s a strategy which worked for Brown in 2010, when everyone was surprised that the union workers, some of whom were paid to picket for Martha Coakley, backed Brown.”

APPS YOU CAN USE: two and a half hours of “intimate activity” will burn off a cheeseburger.