Bigot!

Via Allah's tweet. At his blog, Obama announces, with typical arrogance, he has "no regrets" for his support of the Ground Zero Mosque, not even to those families forever scarred by 9/11.

The most important part of the post, though, is this:

On a serious note, though, I do agree with Rove and various other GOP strategists that it’d be foolish (and potentially destructive) for Republican pols to hammer this issue too hard. I think centrists and indies are looking, above all, for seriousness of purpose from the GOP about digging the country out of the near-bottomless pit of Obamanomics, especially given the rap on the party in the past for getting “sidetracked” with cultural issues. For every one part mosque messaging, I’d prefer 10 parts messaging on jobs and the economy. Besides, Democrats are in full meltdown over this anyway; if any indies are ripe for the picking on the mosque issue, it’ll be the spectacular idiocy and sneering contempt of Madam Speaker and her colleagues that turns them to the GOP, not anything coming from Newt Gingrich. Rock on, Nancy!

A thousand times yes. Because the thing is, gut issues move people on a subconscious level. And they move them hard.

Except... when people realize that a gut issue is driving them on an emotional level, conditioning kicks in and their reason engages and the fight the urge to be driven by a subterranean impulse and begin growing angry if they feel they are being emotionally manipulated.

You don't have to push these issues very hard. You let them do their own subterranean subconscious work, drip-drip-dripping on the mind, shaping it like rain shaping a cliff-face, with only the smallest amount of prompting. You don't come off all angry, nor do you make it sound as if they only thing you have to offer is this position; you say, "I call upon my Democratic opponent to join with me in persuading the Ground Zero Mosque developers to compromise and find a more sensitive and more appropriate site for their mosque."

And then you focus on the economy, on he brain issue, because you are supposed to be engaging the intellect (and no one can hold that against you).

And while you're engaging on the brain issues, pulling people along little by little with reason, you let the gut issue do its work, in background, underneath.

I'm always suspicious of candidates on the Republican side who base their appeal too much in gut-issues or values-stuff because I'm hardwired to be suspicious of that -- I react away from it because 1, I feel like I'm being conned, and 2, because I consider these issues intellectually easy (intellectually easy, even if morally hard) and thus sort of assume the guy pushing it must be a lightweight, or he'd engage me on some higher-brain issue.

So that's what I think. Sell the brain issues, the economy, security, free-market capitalism. Don't sell so much as merely offer the gut issues. If people want them, you understand.

The thing is, gut issues don't need to be sold. They sell themselves. Like drugs. But no one likes a pusher. Even addicts craving their next fix don't really like pushers.

So keep the heat on, yes, but a light heat, almost seeming as if you're just plum exasperated that Obama's making you discuss this issue while you'd so much rather be discussing getting the economy back on track.

Is this dishonest? No. It's craft.

Like I've said about politics: If you want a woman to come upstairs so you can sleep with her you don't say "Come upstairs so I can sleep with you."

You say: "Come upstairs so I can make you pancakes."

Is that dishonest? No. As if she thinks you're just skillet-crazy to make pancakes for brief acquaintances or something.

Look, if she comes upstairs, she's interested in more than pancakes. But you don't put it all on the line like that.

Baby steps, baby steps. Low buy-in.

"It's So Wrong:" Oh, yeah: and let guys like this tell their stories.

The strategy has to be to raise enough pressure to stop this, and offer the Muslim developers some compromise site so they can save face (because, frankly, I have never encountered a more thin-skinned or face-saving culture in my life).

We do have to pressure them to keep up the rage and keep them from going ahead with this. And so we do have to offer them a safety-valve site.

But we can't appear to be looking too much to score politically off it. Then we lose. If it looks like we really just want to make political hay and let the mosque be built because it's bad for America but good for us, we lose.

We have to focus on actually stopping it.

Oh: I keep saying "we." I mean, specifically, candidates and actual political leaders.

It's completely right -- and necessary -- for Pam Gellar to charge hard on this. She is critical in stopping the mosque. Of course it can be her main issue (or one of them).

I didn't mean to say that everyone has to be careful about overemphasizing this. I meant specifically candidates, who can't appear too greedy to profit politically off this shonda.

Posted by: Ace at 12:39 PM | Comments (281)
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Talkin' about stealin' the show.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (76)
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You know when there's a guy on second and there's a hit and so the outfielder throws the ball to second, to keep the man on first from advancing, and concedes the run?

The Democrat Party has to decide whether to throw to home to stop a run that there's no way to stop or throw to second, make the safe play, that at least keeps a runner out of scoring position.

With Republican prospects looking ever better for this fall, the House Democratic Campaign Committee and the PACs that follow its lead face tough triage decisions: Who will they fund?

Republicans need 39 seats to take away the Democrats' majority, so the temptation is to focus on protecting the weakest seats. But protecting a House majority is becoming more unrealistic -- so what should the party do? Will it mount a goal-line stand and pour funds into its weakest 39 races -- or tacitly concede the House, back up and defend the seats it can win?

By moving resources out of the races where they're weakest, Democrats would be swallowing a bitter pill by admitting that Nancy Pelosi's days as House speaker are numbered. But if they focus their funds and manpower on the most endangered seats, they may well let slip away dozens more seats that they might have defended successfully.

Futile efforts to protect a disappearing majority could lead to a loss of 60 to 80 seats, where a more prudent allocation of resources might hold the damage to 50 seats.

Condemning those dozens of "extra" Democrats to defeat would deny the Democrats the incumbents on whom they'd need to build a future majority -- opening the door to a longterm GOP majority.

Prediction: They throw home. Because they're stupid and led by a mental patient.

The run scores, the man flies to second and rounds to steal third, there's an error at third and the ball goes into the foul line gutter and rolls out to the outfield, and that run comes home, too.

The Spending... Is broken down by Patrick Ishmael, who writes:

The NRCC is intent on locking down the most accessible seats first, and then depending on the popular wave to take them over the 39 seat threshold. The DCCC anticipates that this will be a wave election but is intent on making the 39th, majority-losing seat the most difficult one to take by creating a last-gasp, ten seat firewall. Why the NRCC would anticipate a wave and spend a lot of money on seats most susceptible to a wave instead of the wave outliers, or why the DCCC would start its firewall so late in the vulnerability list, are a bit beyond me.

He concludes the NRCC is not being aggressive, as it's focused on the easiest 30 seats, whereas a confident and aggressive party would target the next 30 seats. (I'm making up the 30/30 thing as far as specific numbers but that's what he says, basically.)

I long ago decided that when I start pimping races, I'm not going to focus on the top 30 but the next 30. Everyone will be donating to and hyping the top 30. I want to lock in on 31-60.

I don't know how to go about doing that. At some point I guess I'll ask the RNCC for a list.

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (215)
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Dodd: "How'd it go?"
Frank: "Good... the taxpayer took it all without
so much as a whimper. Near the end he even
seemed to be enjoying it."

Video documentary of Frank's building of the bomb that blew up the entire word economy below, and then claiming he tried to stop Bush from hitting the button, below.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (151)
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I love the smell of desperation in the morning.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) was probably embarrassed when a student protester shoved a pie into his face, but two California candidates might have wanted just deserts.

That's because the two congressional hopefuls have gone on hunger strike to demand a debate with Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.).

...

The strike started with Democrat Ray Lutz, who said he got the idea from former California Rep. Jim Bates. Benoit immediately joined in. The pair are on their fifth day of a hunger strike they started at sundown on Aug. 12.

They want Hunter to join them in a series of debates beginning on Aug. 25. Hunter has agreed to debate Lutz and Benoit — but not until October.

"My hope is that he holds out and doesn't expire before October because that's when we're going to debate him, and we've told him that several times," said Dave Gilliard, a spokesman for Hunter.

Heh.

So far, Lutz has had a rough ride: He's missed 17 meals, lost 14 pounds, taken an enema to avoid toxic shock, talked to a doctor who recommended a salt-water purge, given up exercise and is so tired he has resorted to napping during the day.

These guys.

He's already announced he will not allow himself to die of hunger which sort of takes the whole point out of the hunger strike.

I should note that while Drudge has this headlined "Two DEM candidates" one of them is identified in the article as a Libertarian. I figure he's really a Democrat, so I'll go with Drudge.

Thanks to alamo.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (118)
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"Wouldn't you say 41% is still a
pretty sexy number?"

As usual, the chart itself isn't up yet; see the numbers top left.

Good Lord.

Okay: I called 39% by week's end. I don't know if we can hit that number.

But fingers crossed.

Sorry about all the tiny-post poll blogging today... yes, I did stay up late with the K is for Keith post, changing it, improving it, etc. I am really out of it.

If you haven't read that -- if you said too long, didn't read -- I would suggest you give it a try and stay with it; it turns into one of the funniest things I've written in... years?

One caution: It is extremely offensive about the developmentally challenged. I start calling Olbermann a "retard" and it just gets more insistent on that word as it goes.

Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (144)
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Reading through Instapundit this morning (it's one of the few semi-political blogs that make it through my company's firewall), I noticed THIS link to a Washington Post article comparing the attitudes towards firearms in Montana and Arizona compared to the maternalistic cocoon that the residents of the District of Columbia are required to live within.

It got me thinking: Are draconian gun control laws in DC, Chicago or New York purely a response to lawlessness, or are they a contributing factor in the formation of said lawlessness?

Looking at it intuitively, I think it's reasonable to assume that people who grow up in a community where they're constantly told that private citizens are unable to practice the restraint and responsibility that is required in order to own firearms and carry them concealed in public JUST MIGHT develop into adults who feel unable to be responsible gun owners? Is this a big surprise? Only if you're the sort of person who would be shocked when you tell your child for 18 years that he/she is an idiot who is only suited to pick up the waste products of their social betters..........and then the kid goes out the week after graduation and gets a job riding on a garbage truck.

If irresponsibility and violence are the product of a "Bell Curve" sort of genetic predisposition, then you would expect to see rural or suburban minority communities awash in violence. As far as I know, that is not the case. To me, this indicates that irresponsibility and violence are "nurture" phenomenona rather than "nature".

In a perverse sort of way, I think you could argue that these gun control laws may encourage the sort of behavior that they were supposed to limit. If community standards teach you that gun ownership is a natural precursor to crime and irresponsibility, then it follows that those who value crime and irresponsibility will be drawn to own a gun. The percentages of responsible gun owners will be skewed downward due to bias keeping more responsible people from owning firearms of any type.

Anyway, it's something to think about.

(This post has been certified as 65% "nuttable" by the AoSHQ Ewok Rating Board)

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 09:47 AM | Comments (36)
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Thank Goodness.

In the latest polling conducted on Monday night Sharron Angle and Harry Reid are now tied.

Yesterday both Pennsylvania and Ohio races shifted from Toss-Up to Leans Republican.

And I didn't do this post, but Pennsylvania -- that's almost looking like a lay-up,* right?

* With apologies to the exquisite sensitivities of Ann Althouse, who finds a joke about an Ewok, this guy:

...expressing an interest in "nutting on" one of the women dressed as Lady Ewoks in that Emily List ad to be "despicable."

Whatever you do, don't show her this.

And definitely don't mention that Keith Olbermann piece to her, which was so offensive about the mentally handicapped even I was offended by what I was writing (and apologies to those offended: Sometimes offense is the joke, though).

Wicket the Ewok nutting on a Ewokette is "despicable" but a post dropping the r-bomb fifty times in a cruel way is a-ok by Ms Althouse's lights?

Ah well. We each have our own little fiefdom of offense which we patrol vigorously and aggressively.

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (192)
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63% now oppose the mosque.

Thanks to DrewM.

Question: Can Nancy Pelosi investigate 63% of the biggest city in America? Stay tuned.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (95)
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This boys and girls actually is a danger to fundamental rights...dare to oppose the received wisdom of the ruling class and you'll find yourself on the receiving end of a government sponsored colonoscopy. And sorry, due to cutbacks, there's no anesthesia.

"There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded," she said. "How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we've been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City."

Political opposition to a building project? Threat to religious freedom. Government harassment of political opponents? Just another day at the office for Democrats. Somebody should write a book. Maybe call it, "Liberal Fascism" or something.

Who is joining in this crusade against Americans who dare exercise their rights? As far as I know, not even nut jobs like Olbermann and Obama have gone that far.

Liberals are always far more concerned about imaginary rights (abortion for example) than they are real ones (ever heard of the Second Amendment).

Via Keep America Safe. (I'd suggest changing the name to "Keep America Safe from Democrats).

Added: The audio.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:49 AM | Comments (201)
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