80% OF LIFE IS SHOWING UP. And more like 100% of politics. So who’s showing up? Here’s a pic from reader Charles Browning, who’s waiting for the Romney/Ryan event in Jacksonville. He emails: “2+ hours until 4:30 arrival. This crowd is awesome already.”
UPDATE: Browning sends another pic.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jon Ekdahl sends this pic from the rally, now getting underway.
Plus: “Insanely packed!”
THE AIRCRAFT AND SPACECRAFT of Neil Armstrong’s career.
GETCHER ROMNEY-RYAN MAGNETIC BUMPER STICKERS right here!
BOY FINDS A BONANZA IN WHALE VOMIT. “An 8-year-old boy in England could be up to $63,000 richer, thanks to a piece of solidified whale vomit he picked up on the beach. The chunk may look like a yellow-brownish rock, but it’s actually a primo piece of ambergris, an expensive perfume ingredient that is, um, spewed out by whales.”
I’M NOT A FAN: Why are there so many new tick-borne diseases? “Improvements in medical technology, mostly. The newly discovered tick-borne diseases have probably been infecting humans for years, but they’re not easy to spot. Many victims never realize a tick has bitten them, and the symptoms, such as fevers, aches, and fatigue, are not distinctive and mirror those of common summer viral infections. The patient’s immune system usually fights off the illness unassisted, so doctors don’t bother running the battery of tests required to identify a new pathogen. Only in the rare cases when a patient struggles with the infection are physicians likely to make a genuine discovery. (The disease identified this week, a member of the phlebovirus family, hospitalized two men in Missouri.) They order blood smears or antibody tests to identify the presence of a pathogen, and genetic analyses—which were either inefficient or completely unavailable to doctors just a few years ago—alert researchers to the presence of the previously unidentified bug. Researchers have also become more aggressive recently, with some searching within ticks themselves for evidence of new pathogens. Lyme disease is a classic example of how long a disease can exist in a population without being identified.”
BOB ZUBRIN: The Green War On The Poor. “A ton of carbon dioxide contains 248 kilograms of carbon, so a tax of $300 per ton of CO2 would be equivalent to taxing carbon at a rate of $1.21 per kg. Since there are about 2.5 kg of carbon in a gallon of gasoline, this would increase the cost of a gallon of gas by $3.02 per gallon, or just a little more than Frank says. The average American driver uses about 730 gallons of gasoline per year, so this tax would represent a cost of about $2,200 per driver. This would be a serious hit for the average American worker, whose before-tax income is about $45,000 per year, and devastating to those making less than this. But let us consider the effects on the economy as a whole.”
BUT IT’LL GET LESS ATTENTION THAN TODD AKIN: Former Dem. Hill Staffer and Obama Admin. Official Accused of Drugging and Sexually Assaulting Women. #WaronWomen.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Russian Repression Radicalizes The Caucasus.
ROLL CALL: Mitt Romney’s Congressional Allies Gear Up for First 100 Days. “Congressional allies close to Mitt Romney are already looking ahead to a GOP takeover next year and are trying to set the stage for a burst of post-inauguration activity, lawmakers, aides and GOP strategists told Roll Call this week. Romney and his running mate Rep. Paul Ryan have close ties to key Republicans in both chambers who will be instrumental in pushing the former Massachusetts governor’s agenda to his desk and help him hit the ground running.”
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: The GOP Goes Alinsky On Obama.
THE HILL: Ethics panel extends probe of Rep. Andrews. “The House Ethics Committee on Friday announced it has extended its investigation into Rep. Rob Andrews over allegations that the New Jersey Democrat misused campaign funds to take private family trips. The secretive panel also released a lengthy report from the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) detailing the allegations, including charges that Andrews tapped tens-of-thousands of dollars in campaign funds to cover a 2011 trip to a wedding in Scotland, as well as multiple visits the same year to Los Angeles with his daughters.”
Remember when Nancy Pelosi was going on about a “culture of corruption,” and promising to “drain the swamp?” Yeah, me neither.
RASMUSSEN: Romney 47, Obama 44.
LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, and have a good laugh.
FRED SIEGEL: The Middle Class And Its Enemies.
MORE ODD HAPPENINGS INVOLVING THE MILWAUKEE POLICE DEPARTMENT:
Some people who beat a ticket in Milwaukee Municipal Court might do a little victory dance.
Geoff Davidian appealed.
Davidian wanted his day in court to explore what he contends was a mishandling of a traffic accident involving a police officer and Davidian’s attempts to report it. He wanted a trial, where the police officer would have to testify. Instead, a judge dismissed the case.
“What am I trying to accomplish?” Davidian said. “To have cops not stop a reporter with a camera, and to make this judge think before he does that kind of thing again.”
It all started more than a year ago when Davidian was ticketed for resisting or obstructing, after he tried to videotape the arrest of a woman he says was wrongly struck by a Milwaukee police cruiser exiting an alley.
Unsuccessful in having the case reactivated, Davidian returned to Municipal Court last week with fliers about his experience, warning others headed inside to not let themselves be rushed or bullied.
Davidian says he discovered a whole lot of things he didn’t like about the court during his foray through the system. He says Judge Phillip Chavez refused to allow him to record his own proceeding, wouldn’t allow Davidian’s chosen counsel to appear on his behalf, and didn’t notify him when he denied Davidian’s appeal.
His biggest surprise, he said, was having a substitute judge who’s not even a lawyer appear one day to dismiss the case, while ordering no record be made.
That town really doesn’t seem to care much for the rule of law.
AD AGE REPORTS: NEWSWEEK’S “HIT THE ROAD, BARACK” COVER a huge hit on newsstands.
ROGER SIMON: David Brooks’ Odd Blindness. “Hello, where were you, David? On Thursday evening, one after the other private citizen came forth to testify to Mitt Romney’s extraordinary personal charity and deep community spirit. I have never seen anything like it at a convention, Republican or Democrat. I don’t know if you would call it Burkean, but you would certainly call it eminently decent and highly laudable. The culmination was Ted and Pat Oparowsky of New Hampshire who recounted how much time and attention the young Mitt Romney gave their son, a child he did not know, when the boy was dying of cancer. Party of strivers? Well, maybe David was on the phone to his editors while these folks were speaking or just got bored because they were mostly anonymous and not glamorous Upper West Side Paradise Bobos of any sort. . . . So why is Brooks writing this swill? I met him briefly and, as far as I can tell, he’s a nice guy and certainly a good writer. The answer is that he’s not so very different than the waitress he describes. He’s got a job and he wants to keep it. As the resident conservative at the NYT he can only go so far in telling the truth. If he went further, he’d risk unemployment (not to mention diminution of status).”
RON RADOSH: The RNC Convention Speech You May Have Missed, and Why it is So Important for Americans to Hear.
The speech that should have been seen by most TV viewers of the RNC 2012 convention — but which most of the viewers at home did not see — was the little noticed yet important testimony of Jane Edmonds, Mitt Romney’s Secretary of the Workforce when he was Governor of Massachusetts. Coming before Clint Eastwood, Marco Rubio and Romney himself, it is not surprising that it was missed. But if you flipped channels, most networks — regrettably, even including Fox News — decided instead to give its viewers the wisdom of its panel of pundits.
Edmonds, viewers at home would have found, is an African-American woman, who proudly called herself a “liberal Democrat.” In a strong and firm voice, Edmonds told the delegates and those who did watch her speech, that the Romney she got to know well when he was Governor was a supporter of women, appointing them to high positions in his administration. Moreover, she noted that Romney was a bold, strong administrator, who worked hard on behalf of the people he represented.
“The late Stephen Covey,” Edmonds said, “writes about 2 kinds of people: one type is all about themselves and their success. The other type works as hard as they can — and certainly succeeds, but their success is motivated by doing good for others. That’s how I see Governor Romney. He is authentic.”
Her very presence as a supporter of Romney for President indicated that even a self-proclaimed liberal who is also an African-American and a woman can unashamedly and publicly give her support to Romney’s campaign, undercuts the Democratic narrative in one fell swoop. It is not surprising that a network like MSNBC would choose not to broadcast her short moment in the program, but that most including Fox News did the same is inexcusable.
I saw her speech, and I agree.
UPDATE: Here it is.
MORE: Reader Kelli Sorrells says MSNBC did cover Edmonds’ speech: “As much as I despise MSNBC I can’t believe I have to write to defend them. I watched them on Thursday night for the entertainment factor as I always do on big political nights to witness the silliness live. They did show the Edmonds speech. I remember because Maddow immediately dismissed her speech stating something along the lines of “I don’t know what that was for other than Romney hired people in his administration. How that relates to being president, I’m not sure.” Thats my recollection and not a direct quote.” Perhaps they didn’t realize she was black until it was too late. . . .
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds. “While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project. . . . Low-wage jobs have not been growing especially quickly in this recovery; they account for such a big share of job growth mostly because midwage job growth has been so slow.”
I remember during the Bush recovery in 1992, we heard a lot of experts denigrating the President for an economy that was only creating “McJobs.” Will we hear that this election cycle?
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey was all over this one yesterday.
JAMES TARANTO ON SUBJECTING OBAMA TO SOME HEALTHY RIDICULE:
Here was our favorite line from Mitt Romney’s convention speech: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
We liked it even better when we saw that the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof had tweeted: “Seriously, Romney’s speech esp troubled me by mocking rising seas/climate change. The dismissiveness was appalling.” Gaia is a jealous Goddess, and She will not be mocked!
It actually hadn’t occurred to us that the Romney line was a repudiation of global warmism. If so, that’s lagniappe. What we enjoyed was the deft way in which Romney punctured Obama’s self-aggrandizement–by quoting his most immodest promise ever, pausing for effect, then making an almost comically modest promise of his own. . . .
Obama’s journalistic supporters live in a bizarre alternate reality in which a politician’s actual words mean nothing. When the president says something foolish and offensive, he didn’t say that. Meanwhile every comment from a Republican can be translated, through a process of free association, to: “We don’t like black people.”
The question of race is central to the leftist media’s protectiveness toward Obama, who has both benefited and suffered from a racial double standard. As the late Geraldine Ferraro pointed out in 2008–and was attacked for pointing out–Obama would not have risen so quickly had he been white. No sane person believed that stuff about casting down the oceans and mending “the planet,” but a lot of Americans thought electing a black president would be a salve for racial wounds.
Obama rose in 2008 as a symbol of racial aspirations–the black aspiration to be recognized as fully American and the white aspiration to redeem the sin of racism. That made it difficult to criticize him, much less to mock him. John McCain’s campaign was hobbled by a fear of appearing racist, and Obama himself received a degree of deference that is excessive for any politician.
The left has not moved beyond seeing Obama as a racial symbol, and that is for two reasons. First, his record as president doesn’t have much else to recommend it, so that crying racism is about the best they can do as an argument for re-election. Second, it is of great psychological importance to American left-liberals to believe that their opponents are racist and they themselves are not. Their self-image as a moral elite revolves around the imputation of invidious racial attitudes to others.
Romney and the Republicans, however, have moved on. . . . It is healthy for America that the president be criticized and even mocked. Deference to a Dear Leader has no place in a democracy. It’s healthy for race relations, too, that he be judged on his record rather than held to a lower standard in the name of racial progress. When a black politician is treated just like any other politician, that’s genuine progress.
Except to, er, “progressives.”
REAL WRATH-OF-GOD STUFF: Biblical-Type Floods Are Real, and They’re Absolutely Enormous. So far, geological evidence of cats and dogs living together, however, remains inconclusive.
UPDATE: Reader Rob Cooper writes: “Um… Bad news:”
We’re gonna need a bigger bowl.
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