IF THERE WERE $500,000,000 WORTH OF PAINTINGS in the mobster’s backyard, “there would have been scuttlebutt,” says the neighbor.
Archive for 2012
May 10, 2012
AT AMAZON, special deals in Instant Video.
IT SEEMS THAT JOHN EDWARDS THOUGHT HE COULD WANGLE a Supreme Court appointment out of Obama.
BLUNT WANTS SOLIS TO EXPLAIN WHY PRESS MUST USE HER GOVERNMENT SOFTWARE, COMPUTERS: The Missouri Republican senator sent the Labor Sec a tough letter today demanding to know, among much else, “what precedents exist for forcing journalists to utilize government-owned systems and networks to report the news.”
POP QUIZ: WHAT’S THE LATEST MEDIA EXPOSE ABOUT?
Yep, you answered correctly. So if you want 5,500 words on what a monster Mitt Romney was that one time at band camp, the Washington Post is your paper. I wanted to link to their investigative stories on Obama’s time at Punahou (and Columbia and Harvard and Chicago and, uh, D.C.), but I can’t seem to find them.
5,500 word articles (and including the headline, that’s a pretty close word count by Ricochet’s Mollie Hemingway; I double-checked by pasting the article into Microsoft Word and using its counter) don’t happen overnight, at least judging by my speed when I was routinely cranking out 2,000 and 3,000 word magazine articles at a clip. You have to round up the interview sources, talk to them on the phone or in person, transcribe their quotes, and then the editors have to vet the piece, it gets rewritten, restructured, polished, etc. Presumably, this piece has been in the works for sometime, as part of the Post’s expected series of hits on the candidate with the (R) after his name. (See also: George Allen in 2006, the Post’s obsession with Bob McDonnell’s college thesis in 2009, the Post’s non-obsession with Obama’s college-era past in 2008 and 2012, etc.)
At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey adds that Romney wisely apologized for his high school hijinks 47 years ago, rather than debate the charges:
Politically speaking, this was the smart thing to do. Other campaigns would have tried challenging the veracity of the stories and/or the motives of the witnesses, but that’s a losing proposition. The more a campaign debates those points, the longer the story goes, and the more legitimacy it has in the media. Instead, the Romney campaign made it an old story before it began to grow legs by just expressing remorse over any cruelty that may have taken place in high school.
I eagerly await the next set of stories about how in middle school Romney refused to give cuts in line to kids from low-income families, or how he shamelessly violated the “exies-no-erasies” rule in elementary school with his female classmates.
Yesterday, Hot Air contributor Mike Rathbone writes that he’s happy that Obama has decided to roll out the gay marriage issue now rather than as a Hail Mary play in the fall:
I also urged Team Romney to put pressure on the President so that he would announce in May or June and not September or October. Now that that has happened (more thanks to the MSM than Team Romney, but a win’s a win), this issue plays itself out over the next month (what else is the MSM going to talk about). If Romney doesn’t get drawn into a back-and-forth over this issue, it will be pretty much dead by June, especially when the May unemployment rate comes out. Then we can all (try to) focus on Wreckovery Bummer: With A Vengeance.
Or to put it another way, “That’s nice; now what about jobs?”
RELATED: Via Sarah Hoyt’s post below, “Young Obama Bullied….A Girl.” He did far worse things to Lassie, as well.
More from Jim Treacher: “If you went to grade school with Mitt Romney and he dipped your pigtails in an inkwell, contact David Axelrod immediately.”
So did ANYONE actually read Dreams From My Father? No, they didn’t, did they?
I for one would really like to see the President’s college transcripts. I think in his vaunted intellectual prowess we’re facing a deception of Elizabeth Warren proportions. But I could be wrong. Very smart people can be startlingly dumb. So — Why can’t we see the transcripts?
Apology — I’m trying to schedule posts while typing with a numbed finger. If you see magically appearing and disappearing posts, that’s me mistyping. I’m going to stay away from keyboard now, till anesthesia wears off.
THAT’S NICE; NOW WHAT ABOUT JOBS?
While he’s no longer actively blogging, the Don Surber Rule is still in full effect this election cycle.
JONATHAN COHN CONCEDES THAT HIS ARGUMENT would mean that “Obama is lying when he says he didn’t raise taxes on people making less than $250,000.”
MASSIVE PROTESTS at Vladimir Putin’s inauguration.
TO BAN OR NOT TO BAN? Germany considers banning Salafist groups (the ideological comrades of the bin Ladenists) after violent street clashes.
I’m not convinced it’s a good idea to ban political movements. The ideas can’t be banned, after all. Thought cannot be policed. But Germany is already a country that bans totalitarian political parties, so why not add Salafists to the list? Anyone who thinks such a move would be “Islamophobic” should be aware that Tunisia, an Arab country that’s 99 percent Muslim, also bans the Salafist party. When these people reach critical mass they’re extraordinarily dangerous.
BLUE STATE PAIN: John Merline at Investor’s Business Daily reports that an IBD analysis of government data shows blue states have fared noticeably worse than red states under Obama: “IBD compared average job growth, unemployment, changes in housing prices, per capita income and GDP growth, and gas prices for the 22 states that voted for John McCain in 2008 and the 28 states that voted for Obama. On every indicator but one, blue states have done worse, on average, than red states.”
HUGE EXPLOSIONS IN DAMASCUS: Syrian state television reports two huge explosions in Damascus that killed 55 people and injured 372. The question is, were these attacks mounted by jihadists, which is entirely possible, or were they staged by the Syrian government itself like some in the past?
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SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? Don’t quite know what to make of this one, or whether it has any real legs. But it was intriguing enough to me that I read it, re-read it, and mumbled a four letter word to myself afterwards. Doug Hagmann at the Canada Free Press says a high level Department of Homeland Security insider is blowing the whistle on Department preparations for a “civil war.” He says:
The Obama administration and many of the un-elected ‘czars,’ either directly or indirectly, are engaged in covert activities with the occupy movement, various labor protests, and other subversive activities inside the U.S.,” stated my source. Using untracked campaign funds, they are paying people to infiltrate the various movements to cause physical destruction of property and disrupt commerce. That began last year, but has increased ten-fold already this year,” stated this source. He added that they are using some lower level DHS agents to make the payments under the context of tracking subversives, but they are the unwitting subversives. “It’s like Fast & Furious” but in the social realm,” he added.
Let’s hope this is a hoax or something.
CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL (AND MAYBE POLITICS, TOO): Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart.com says it’s time for Elizabeth Warren to fess up. Leahy observes, “This issue isn’t going away until Ms. Warren either makes this statement or offers verifiable proof of her claim. Fessing up is the best option for a campaign that is presently on life support.” Exactly.
NEW WISCONSIN RECALL POLL: Walker 50%, Barrett 45%. Rasmussen.
BIDEN “PROBABLY GOT OUT A LITTLE BIT OVER HIS SKIS,” said Obama. Do you think maybe it was all planned, that Biden was sent out to make what would appear to be a gaffe to create the occasion for Obama to seem to need to come forward on this issue?
ADDED: Sorry, I can’t make the poll display as a workable poll. If you want to actually vote, go here.
JIM GERAGHTY: How Wisconsin Could Be the First Domino of 2012.
Meanwhile, Michael Barone adds that reelection is not inevitable for Obama.
WHAT KIND OF LITERARY ECOSYSTEM DO WE WANT TO BUILD?
FROM MICHAEL YON: MEDEVAC Madness.