How is this even close to legal?

We're now being forced to pay for propaganda against our interests?

Yet in a sick deal with the Obama administration, Griffith shatters his credibility, promising all roses with a health-care law that even Barney Fife could tell you is a disaster in the making.

"This year, like always, we'll have our guaranteed benefits," Griffith says in the gauzy ad, as if today's seniors are America's last generation.

"And with the new health-care law, more good things are coming. Free checkups, lower prescription costs. and better ways to protect us and Medicare from fraud."

Yeah, as if the real problem with today's economy is that people aren't paying enough in taxes and the government has too much money on its hands.

I'm sure it's an "informative" ad, that's how it's being sold; that it's a "public service," telling people about their exciting new benefits (which supposedly haven't changed).

But it's not. ObamaCare isn't even kicking in yet -- this is to sell the program to voters for the midterms, not inform people of the "benefits" they don't even have yet.

Posted by: Ace at 06:45 AM | Comments (84)
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The South -- well, we expect big things from the South. There still are a bunch of Democrat-held seats -- by tradition more than by voter conviction -- and those may soon turn Republican. (And, as a Democratic strategist warned earlier this year, some of these seats which have remained Democratic mostly out of tradition "may not ever be coming back." Or words to that precise effect.)

But it's the non-South (which Barone calls "The North" for convenience) which may be the Democrats' nightmare.

Republicans actually won the popular vote for the House in the North (defined as the other 36 states) by a 51 percent to 48 percent majority [in the 1966 anti-Great Society landslide, which Barone figures is analogous to this year]. They have only done so since in three elections, in 1968 (a virtual carbon copy of 1966 in House races), in their breakthrough year of 1994 and in the post-9/11 year of 2002.

Current polling data suggests that Republicans have a chance of doing so once again in 2010. The realclearpolitics.com's average of recent generic ballot polls -- which party's candidate for the House would you vote for? -- shows Republicans ahead by a historically unprecedented margin of 46 percent to 40 percent.

If those numbers hold, and if they turn out to underpredict Republican performance in the popular vote, as they have in the past, that could mean that Republicans would win a popular vote plurality or majority in the North. Those are two significant ifs, but they're possible.

...

Republicans could easily gain 20 seats in the South. But they could gain even more in the North if current numbers hold up.

In 2008, Democrats won the popular vote in the North by 57 percent to 40 percent -- roughly comparable to their lead way back in 1964, the year of Lyndon Johnson's landslide.

If the popular vote in the North should turn out to go narrowly Republican, as it did in 1966, it could be disaster for Democrats. They lost a net 38 seats in the North that year, when they held just about as many seats Northern seats as now. Not a happy scenario for Democrats. But not out of the realm of possibility.

Missouri, it is always noted, is the eternal bellwether, a state which almost perfectly mirrors the partisan split and ideological impulses of the entire nation. Famously, it's the state that always votes for the winner in every presidential contest, since eighteen blah-blah-blah. (Whatever it is. Google it.)

So in which direction is weathervane Missouri pointing?

How big was this victory? Three weeks ago, Rasmussen polled likely voters in Missouri and asked whether they supported repeal of ObamaCare. At that time, 58% said they supported its repeal, with 50% strongly supporting it. Thirty-eight percent said they opposed repeal. That 58/38 split turned into a 71/29 disaster for Democrats and Obama.

If anything, this shows that opposition to ObamaCare is growing, not receding, but thatÂ’s probably not what actually happened. While general-population and registered-voter samples may have seen a bit of softening to ObamaCare opposition, those arenÂ’t the people turning out to vote this year. Even Rasmussen may be underestimating the power of ObamaCare repeal in its likely-voter turnout, as their last poll on this question in Missouri clearly underestimated (in an indirect survey, of course) the results for this election.

Indeed. Even Rasmussen, derided by the Kool-Aid drinkin' left as stacked in favor of conservative voters, massively understated the conservative advantage in the state that leads the nation politically.

Ed says these results pricked the media bubble (their false, liberal-friendly cocooning) on ObamaCare. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and disagree with that. As with Martha Coakley (and Corzine and Deeds), the media is about to go into excuse-making mode. They will focus on the failure of proper organization in favor of ObamaCare (against the referendum) and blow it off as a case of "Well of course people are going to vote against their taxes going up."

And they'll be blissfully oblivious as to the import of that. Well of course people are going to vote against their taxes going up. It's just not going to sink in that an awful lot is packaged up in that dismissive "Of course."

Posted by: Ace at 06:02 AM | Comments (114)
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Maybe his Uncle Goober can be the judge.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:18 AM | Comments (89)
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Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick taken down in Democrat primary.

Her loss is described as another "anti-incumbent" smackdown, combined with a certain name recognition that may or may not have become recently unpopular. Take a look at the incumbents mentioned though and see if you can find the little funny:

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:54 AM | Comments (95)
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The Times makes a nonsense non-correction. Breitbart credits it as a correction, but I think it's crap: They claim that while racial invectives were hurled at Rep. Carson, there is no proof that members of the Tea Party were responsible.

Well-- Actually, there's no damn proof that any epithets were hurled at all, and in fact an awful lot of evidence against it, like videos.

ItÂ’s not enough because the Times continues to imply that something racially charged might happened on the steps of the Capitol, when we have shown conclusively, via multiple videos of the moment in question, that nothing of the sort occurred.

No, it isn't, it's a face saving CYA bit of crap and they shouldn't be permitted to save face this way.

Rep. Carson is a goddamned liar and so is the oft-claimed "Paper of Record."

Thanks DanF.

Posted by: Ace at 08:31 PM | Comments (86)
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The Game: Who Goes Nazi?

The Anchoress had a recent post based on a HarperÂ’s piece from August of 1941, written by Dorothy Thompson, "Who Goes Nazi?" It's a parlor game where you look at the people around you and decide who would join the Nazis in a crunch. Of course when Thompson wrote this, it wasn't merely a game - she had seen it played out several times in real life. And in today's version it doesn't have to be actual Nazis - it could be any ideological cause that's willing to use violence to gain power.

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times–in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.

And then she begins to go person by person at an imaginary cocktail party and analyze whether they'd go Nazi or not and why: more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:04 PM | Comments (564)
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282 442 of 3354 precincts reporting.

The first of 3 (I think) state referendums on Obamacare, to amend state law to "deny the government authority to 'penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private health insurance or infringe upon the right to offer or accept direct payment for lawful healthcare services.'" Last month a Missouri judge rejected a challenge to remove Prop C from the ballot.

We know what Pete Stark thinks. Here's hoping Missouri sends DC a big "oh, well then allow us to retort."

UPDATE: 1517 precincts reporting, YES: 75.6% NO: 24.4% (or Yes votes only leading by 51.2% as that goober ExJon would put it)

Question: What's the spin tomorrow? "What's wrong with Missouri?" I'd have said anything less than 60% they could blow off, but 3 to 1 sounds an awful lot like what we've maintained for months is the general public reaction to Obamacare.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:33 PM | Comments (234)
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Which is a lower number than $391 billion, see. So... if Obama had actually dropped the money out of airplanes he would have gotten at least $391 billion out of it. He actually managed to lose $51 billion in the process.

Obama's cheerleaders are claiming that they can calculate Obama "saved or created" 8.5 million jobs (yayyy...) and so on and so forth.

But what they are doing is combining three effects: The TARP stabilization (which Bush did, not Obama), a loose monetary policy (which the Fed is doing, not Obama) and only lastly Obama's fiscal stimulus.

But having combined all three elements, they report -- or suggest -- and the media claims that the Stimulus worked these great wonders itself.

Which not even Obama's cheerleaders claim. They claim the exact effects from each cannot be ascertained, and yadda yadda.

But Obama's Economic Javert, Geoff, at Innocent Bystanders, takes their claims and teases out numbers from what they present, numbers that Obama's cheerleaders didn't see fit to tell you about.

And what he finds is that they're crowing about the fact that Obama took $391 billion of taxpayer money and spent it so damn well he got $340 billion in spending power out of it.

Takes a genius to do that, huh? To lose almost 15% of the money you started with right off the jump?

How's that "multiplier" working out for you guys, huh?

Thanks to LauraW.

Pontificating Jackasses: I remember Paul Krugman writing ten times "it is generally accepted that the multiplier for government spending is 1.4, that is, for every dollar you spend you produce $1.40 in economic activity..."

And I kept wondering, "Um, who is that 'generally accepted' by?"

And he would claim this multiplier was greater than the multiplier for tax cuts (although he never told me that figure -- I suspect it was close to 1.4).

Anyway, so, the generally accepted multiplier is 1.4?

Hey, Paul?

How's 0.8 grabbin' ya?

From the Comments:

America is Back!

Posted by: NEWSWEEK

Posted by: Ace at 04:32 PM | Comments (172)
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Yeah, I know; I just wanted to write a number in the thirties.

Again, I expected his support to suddenly crater. That's not happening. It just continues eroding little by little.

Almost in the thirties.

Only 41% of those surveyed Tuesday through Sunday approved of the way Obama is handling his job, his lowest rating in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll since he took office in January 2009. In GallupÂ’s separate daily tracking poll, his approval was at 45% Monday.

So why didn't you hear about this new low water mark? Because the media do what they always do -- when they want to hide bad poll numbers for a Democrat, they instead focus on other findings. In this case, they headline that support for the war is falling.

Well, okay, so it is.

But what about that 41%? That seems rather important too, eh?

Or are they trying to imply that's the major source of public dissatisfaction -- blaming Bush, as usual?

And how is Blame Bush going these days?

Forty-eight percent of voters now believe that President Obama's policies are to blame for the bad economy, while 47 percent fault former President George W. Bush.

According to a new Rasmussen survey, Obama's 48 percent represents a three-point increase since last month, giving him a greater share of the blame than Bush for the first time since May 2009, when the question was first polled.

I have a dream that when Obama is voted out of office, his first network interview in 2013 will consist of the former president blaming Bush.

Posted by: Ace at 03:32 PM | Comments (218)
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WDEF is located in the tri-state area of Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee.

LiveLeaks describes this as "Two astrophysicists explain the robbery to a reporter."

And also point out the main interviewee's black eye is from an unrelated incident.

I just sort of imagine that there was no robbery, and that they're making up a story to cover a pool-cue fight at their meth-lab, but that's probably just because I watch Justified.

Posted by: Ace at 02:54 PM | Comments (53)
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