I feel bad for Mitt Romney. As I always say, he's handsome but without any actual charisma. He has so little charisma he comes off dumb, even though he is, by testimony of disinterested third parties, among the smartest men they've ever met.

So he's got the Curse of Being Bad On TV -- he's qualified for the presidency, but he has a hell of a time projecting that. Meanwhile, Good On TV empty suits/coke snorters like Barack Obama know how to squint and set their jaws and project confidence and authority.

Plus, he's rich, thanks in no small part to his own talents and his own hard work, but for some reason that counts against him, even in the Republican Party, which is supposed to be all meritocratic and against class warfare but there sure does seem to be a big craving for blue-collar authenticity anyway.

Plus -- sure, his policies. And that inconvenient religion.

But he seems trapped. The more he tries to convince us he's authentic the more desperately inauthentic he seems.

So now a red pickup truck, like the man he supported, Senator Scott Brown.

The 2008 Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor drove a beat-up pickup to a New Hampshire fundraiser last night. He's also driven it to other political events as he weighs another run in 2012.

But if he runs, a spokeman said, his preferred ride will be the "Mitt Mobile," an RV he used last time around.

I think Romney has to do better at revealing who he is -- even if he thinks people will be turned off by who he is. If he's a brilliant guy who got mega-rich, he should kind of own that, shouldn't he? If he's a social moderate, he should own that (somewhat).

He can't just keep casting about for an identity.

Sometimes the truth is worth a shot (after you've tried everything else, of course).

What do you think, Bruce Campbell? more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (259)
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Well, if you're going to act as if you're suppressing basic background information because you have something major to hide, people are going to start thinking you're suppressing basic background information because you have something major to hide.

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (316)
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If I'm hearing this right (and maybe I'm not -- I'm in a vehicle), BasilMarceaux.com gave himself a badge.

The badge gives him plenary power to arrest anyone he suspects may be breaking the Constitution.

Okay. Sure, I get that.

But what's this part about the badge conferring upon him immunity for murder?

That's where he lost me. Sure, arrest anyone you see breaking the Constitution, right, good. Certainly we could use more roving bands of psychologically-suspect men arresting random people with pretend badges for fantasized crimes.

But a self-awarded license to kill?

That goes just a little too far. I'd let him have immunity for negligent homicide, maybe. Manslaughter, maybe. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (74)
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Lazy Friday afternoon in August. Not much going on. Even Chris Christie appears to have taken a day off from being AWESOME.

Chat amongst yourselves for now.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:40 AM | Comments (49)
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Net Neutrality is a big deal for a lot of folks. I can't say I'm anything near being fully up to speed on it but a generally safe rule of thumb is that if Keith Olbermann and Al Franken are for it, I'm against it.

Last night Olbermann (no longer of NBC's Sunday Night Football coverage), had on Josh Silver, a HufPo writer to go on about the supposed dire consequences of not allowing the government to regulate the internet.

OLBERMANN: But if the FCC is not in charge of oversight from a—from a governmental point of view, is there—is anybody in charge of it? I mean, is the Federal Trade Commission in charge? Anaconda Wire? Who‘s in charge?

SILVER: Nobody. This is the problem. And it really shows just how badly money has corrupted the government. I mean, we‘ve got a situation where the phone companies spend—they‘re second only to the pharmaceutical companies in Washington spending. They‘ve got the majority of the U.S. Congress on their side on this issue and they know it.

So, they‘re running the table. The Federal Communications Commission is the only agency who can regulate on this. And, so far, the chairman, Obama‘s appointee, has sat on his hands since that court decision last April. The only thing that‘s going to work is if people across the country understand the gravity and importance of this issue and actually start to get involved.

OLBERMANN: How did Alan Grayson—who‘s been one of the progressive heroes of the last six to eight months—how did he get on the wrong side of this? He‘s against net neutrality?

SILVER: It‘s crazy. He‘s saying that Congress should make the

decision and not the Federal Communications Commission because, he knows,

the next FCC could change the rules again. But the problem is, as I said -
you know, it‘s important to know, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Henry Waxman
most of the leadership in the Congress right now, they‘re good on this issue. They support net neutrality and they support consumers.

But, you know, the rest of the Congress is not good. Seventy-four Democrats came out against net neutrality and against the FCC reclassifying or reasserting authority, and all but one Republican House member is against agency authority.

So, you know, once people start to understand, though, that this is the big game-changer, then things can and will have to change—because the president has come out, a big supporter of net neutrality, as has the FCC chairman.

So much fun stuff to unpack in this little excerpt.

To begin with, let's be honest, if the federal government regulated the internet from the start the internet as we know it wouldn't exist. The few people involved in it would be computer geeks spending all there time on CompuServe message boards. Thanks to the freewheeling, entrepreneurial landscape, non computer geeks can spend all day on blogs! Isn't that better? Oh that and the fact that billions of dollars of commerce is conducted on the modern internet, whole new industries have been created and continue to be created, much of the increase in political activity we are seeing is directly linked to the ability of people to connect and share more information than ever before and on and on and on.

But according to these geniuses, the only salvation for this modern wonder is...government regulation.

Note well the irony that Keith is absolutely aghast at the idea that the government isn't regulating how the market prices the importance of information from his perch on a cable TV network which is not government regulated.

I also love the idea that the FCC has to grab this power because Congress may not vote for it. Elected representatives of the people don't want something? No problem. Just pretend that their only objection is rooted in corruption, ignore the popular will and regulate by fiat!

Democracy isn't a value to these people, it's a tool to use when it suits them and to ignore when it doesn't. Liberalism is simply an exercise in raw power by self-anointed leaders who think they know what's best for the proles.

As I said, I'm not an expert on Net Neutrality but I'm more than a little skeptical that the answer is government. If companies set up this multi-tiered system and people don't like it, there are always other companies they can do business with. If too many companies wind up providing a service in a way customers don't like, someone will invent a new technology to deliver it to them. And besides, who to say there aren't going to be some customer advantages from the systems companies set up?

There's never going to be a perfect balance between customer desire and companies trying to maximize profits. That's why markets exist, to allow for choice, to provide feedback to participants and to spur on innovations. Those are not exactly the strong suits of government bureaucracies.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:18 AM | Comments (152)
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Amnesty Through Policy Already In Effect

"Unprecedented," indeed.

In an unprecedented move within the Department of Homeland Security, the detention and removal officers and agents responsible for and sworn to enforcing our nation's immigration laws issued an exhaustive, scathing letter simply titled "VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE IN ICE DIRECTOR JOHN MORTON AND ODPP ASSISTANT DIRECTOR PHYLLIS COVEN" on June 11, 2010. The letter, acquired through sources, provides a litany of examples of how ICE's mission is being skewed towards supporting an unflinching goal of amnesty by refusing to allow agents to do their job; allowing criminal aliens to roam free; depleting resources for key enforcement initiatives that preceded this administration; and misrepresenting facts and programs, demeaning the extent of the criminal alien problem and geared to support amnesty.

It's a bombshell. The agents document how their leadership are deliberately thwarting the core mission of the department.

Interestingly, ICE Director John Morton told the Washington Post, in regard to this letter and other interest groups that call for his resignation (apparently this is quite common for him), that such letters are just, "part of the territory here."

"Shut up," he explained.

READ THE WHOLE THING.

Go, go now. It's important.

Thanks to Jazz at Food And Weather.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:22 AM | Comments (263)
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The BLS released the unemployment rate for July today: it appears we got stuck with 9.5% for another month. What does 9.5% look like? Well, a little something like this:

In related "The Chart" news, lauraw recommends this Twitter (H/T to Andy at The Hostages).

The BLS report spins the situation as best it can, focusing on the 71,000 jobs created by the private sector and the 143,000 lost due to the census, but there are plenty 'o other exciting items of note:

• Non-farm jobs lost: 258,000 [normally the BLS ignores the ag sector and only talks about non-farm employment in the first paragraph. This month, though, the ag sector added ~100K jobs, so the BLS decided to talk about total employment instead. Spin much?]


• The civilian labor force lost another 181,000 workers in July. That brings the participation rate down to 64.6% - worse than even a year ago (before the awesome healing powers of The Stimulus really took hold) when it was 65.4%. [Ed Morrissey sometimes plots the participation rate, but it looks like he's being lazy this morning.]


• The number of full-time workers dropped by 507,000!! We now have 2 million fewer full-time workers than we had a year ago.

Posted by: Geoff at 06:10 AM | Comments (151)
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FRIDAAAAAY!!!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:15 AM | Comments (192)
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It's not exactly "Cool Facts" per se but it's sort of the same idea. It's a lot of Pat Caddell quotes and tactics and sex-secrets.

So far: more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:45 PM | Comments (540)
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Gee you'd think with thousands of pages of legislation, the Congress might have actually gotten around to defining "health care services".

You'd be dead wrong about that (see what I did there?)

No wonder Missourians rebelled, as with voters in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia last year. There will be more such what-have-they-done ObamaCare moments. Wait until the public discovers the government is now literally determining what qualifies as "health care" in America.

That isn't a typo. ObamaCare mandates that insurers spend a certain percentage of premium dollars on benefits, but Democrats never got around to writing the fine print of what counts as a benefit. So a handful of regulators are now choosing among the tens of thousands of services that doctors, hospitals and insurers offer. Few other government decisions will do more to shape tomorrow's health market, or what's left of it.

There are two parts to this. One is the MLR, the "medical loss ratio", the ratio of the amount of money paid out in claims (losses) over the amount of money taken in for premiums. This has been wisely established at 85% for large employers and 80% for small businesses. That target had to come from the Post Office, or maybe USDA. No one knows how to improve "benefits of services" against "cost to perform" like the federal bureacracy. If there's a nickel's worth of work you can get out of a dollar, they will by God get around to it. Eventually.

The other part, and this will kill you (haha I did it again!), is what services actually are defined as "medical treatment".

Currently: none. We've got top men on it. Top. Men.

Yesterday almost one million Americans in Missouri voted on whether their legislature should amend state law to nullify the individual mandate and push back against the federal health care cartel. And over 70 percent of them said "hell yes".

Granny Rictus had it half right, sometimes you have to pass a bill just so you know what's not in it too.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:08 PM | Comments (76)
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