Over at Verum Serum, more Occupy stuff.

Any time your organization's name frequently appears with the words "human feces" you're probably not going to win the narratie.

Posted by: Ace at 02:26 PM | Comments (382)
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I know this is old. I'm late to the party.

I like the idea of Tebow. I'm bored with the NFL's current hegemonic offensive style. It's all the same.

I'm rooting for schemes, not teams. I want some wildcat action or something different.

The Broncos, led by 220 pound fullback-shaped not-particularly-good-at-passing Tebow, seem to be different.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (225)
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Kerry says that the various accounts in which he mad lots of trades armed with nonpublic information could not possibly be a cause for scandal, as these accounts were in blind trust.

The media reliably parrots this.

One problem.

[Quoting an old, pre-2004 election article in the LAT:] Leon E. Panetta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton, agreed that although the amount of Heinz KerryÂ’s wealth was not a campaign issue, it could cause problems if Kerry were elected.

“They will have to seriously consider putting it in a blind trust,” Panetta said. “All of us who have served in government have had to do that. In the end, it is the better way to go, because it removes any suspicion that a decision is self-serving. You have enough problems just making a decision, without dealing with the concern you may be putting money in your pocket.”

Yet Mr. Panetta’s quote should have made it clear to anyone reading—and especially to journalists at the Los Angeles Times—that Mr. Kerry did not, in fact, have a blind trust. So why did the media fail to properly vet a presidential candidate’s investments?

For conservatives, the answer is simple: liberal media bias. But Schweizer says he finds the mediaÂ’s glaring oversight disheartening.

“The fact that it took a Tallahassee-based policy wonk working with a team of college student researchers to uncover the ‘honest graft’ by Democrats and Republicans and publish it all in a book like Throw Them All Out is, I think, a little depressing,” he says. “The media play an important role in vetting our leaders. When they fail to do so, it hurts us all, regardless of our political views.”

I mentioned earlier: there are two aspects of media bias to the media's determination to tank this story.

The first is simple political bias. Democrats have been robbing us stupid for decades, and they want to protect their beloved socialist thieves.

The other bias is due to institutional turf-protection and defensiveness over incompetency.

The media could have had this story. But they were too lazy and/or too biased to report on it. It wasn't fed directly to them by a prosecutor making a case, so why bother doing any digging?

Laziness and incompetence.

Because they missed a big story, and yet they are supposedly in charge of Discovering Big Stories, it must be the case then that this is not a big story at all. It must be a tiny little story, easily poo-pooed.

Because if it's big, and the media missed it... what purpose do they serve, then? What justification is there for their social status?

And 1%-level salaries? (Well, the top ones are 1-percenters, anyway.)

The One Percent Media

Protecting our Socialist Overlords through our profound political bias and simple inability to serve as anything other than palace stenographers.

More: On John Kerry's aristocratically-pointy nose for hot medical stocks.

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (80)
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You can read the quotes here, but based on the ones at the end, I'm just listening before I post it.

MATTHEWS: This is an embarrassment. This is why this country is being torn apart, with this kind of hatred.

ELDER: ItÂ’s called a disagreement. You perceive it as hatred, just like you perceive that the Republicans want people to die on gurneys, and they donÂ’t care about illegal aliens, and all the other silly things that youÂ’ve said. ThatÂ’s hatred. ThatÂ’s hatred, Chris.

Audio at the link.

Thanks to JohnE.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (181)
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Finally? Finally.

He called Fast and Furious a “bureaucratic bungling” that had made guarding the border “substantially more dangerous.”

“Our own federal government provided more than 2,000 firearms to some of the most dangerous criminals in North of America, many of which are still unaccounted for,” Perry told the audience at the annual Federal Law Enforcement Foundation luncheon, held at a hotel in New York City.

“Federal law enforcement officials deserve an attorney general who displays the same courage and the sense of responsibility with which they serve,” he added. “And America deserves a president and a Congress willing to give law enforcement officials the support they need to truly secure our borders.”

People following the story closely probably won't be happy that he called it "bungling," as many people seem convinced that there was some kind of They Meant This To Happen plot. (But bear in mind the Prosecutor's Rule: It's not about what I believe, it's about what I can prove.)

But, still. It can't hurt to have a candidate pushing this, as well as the case against Eric "Pardon Me" Holder.

Thanks to Ben Domenech and his daily political intelligencer, The Transom.

Posted by: Ace at 11:28 AM | Comments (298)
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This isn't pop culturally relevant to Meghan McCain, but I remember this story, and some thick suspicions about Natalie Wood's drowning. Ultimately cops ruled it an accidental drowning and closed the file.

The boat captain, aboard with Wood, Wagner, and Christopher Walken (!! -- please don't be involved in this!), now says he lied to homicide cops back in 1981.

A boat captain said Friday that he lied to authorities about the case and that Wood's husband, Wagner, was to blame for her death.

Police said Wagner was not a suspect and that they had new information that warranted a reopening the case.

Walken says he went to bed and then woke up to be told (imagine the WalkenVoice) "there was a tragedy."

The boat captain doesn't say Wagner murdered her, leaving open the possibility that his (claimed) story is that Wagner caused her death in an accidental fashion.

CNN has more details:

Actor Robert Wagner waited hours to call the Coast Guard after his wife, actress Natalie Wood, went missing from a yacht in 1981, the vessel's captain said Friday.

Wagner also told those on board the boat what to say to authorities about the incident, the captain said. Wood was later found drowned.

Dennis Davern, the former captain of the yacht Splendour, said he first searched the boat to check whether Natalie was anywhere on board. He said he then wanted to turn on the searchlight to see whether she was in the water, but that Wagner told him not to.

"We don't want to do that right now," Wagner allegedly told Davern.

Wood's sister says she heard a loud fight between Wagner and Wood before she drowned. The sister also says Wood was not a swimmer, and would not have gone swimming on her own, especially not, as Wood apparently was, dressed in a nightshirt and socks (!!!).

Plus... bruises on the body.

Actually, I think that CNN article is just worth reading in full.

There's a hint that maybe Walken and Wood were... well, doing something that Wagner was jealous about. Walken and Wood had costarred in a sci-fi thriller called Brainstorm. I think she died before shooting wrapped, resulting in her disappearing out of the movie, and probably some Rescue Editing that didn't wind up rescuing it. (I have a dim recollection of the end of the film not making much sense, and feeling incomplete.)

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (161)
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Kind of a good ad, though. I've got no problems with it. She's using what she's got, and what she's got is dissatisfaction with the other candidates.

Bonus insult to the non-attacked candidates for not even rating.

I'm still suspicious of Bachmann's soft handling of Romney. Yes, she hits him on abortion. But this is so baked in the cake I wonder what possible good it could do to remind people.

Why not his continuing defense (by proxy) of Bachmann's bete noir, ObamaCare? more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (140)
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Because Gingrich is now a front-runner, you'd expect him to be on the receiving end of attacks by other candidates, as all previous front-runners were.

But will anyone?

Captain Ed considers:

The other reasons pertain to specific qualities and skills Gingrich has in debates. He has a much better grasp on policy and data than most of the other candidates on stage, which means that attacking Gingrich entails a considerable risk of looking ignorant and ill-informed when he responds. Perhaps more importantly, Gingrich has been very disciplined in debates this year, mostly refraining from attacks on other candidates. Only Ron Paul has had fewer (7 to GingrichÂ’s 8, and Cain next at 9), and that could be a function of getting less air time in a couple of recent debates. ItÂ’s difficult to come off well when attacking the one candidate who had professed the need for party unity and who consistently lauds the qualities of the other candidates on stage; in fact, itÂ’s easy to look churlish and ungracious.

Those are good points. If you attack Gingrich, he's going to attack you back, and he is very good in this format. Does anyone have the guts to do it?

Bachmann does, I think.

The other thing is that Gingrich has really done a clever makeover, from Mean Mister Mustard to The Sun King. He's unfailingly complimentary towards his fellow candidates -- and was so even when he was so far behind them he couldn't even see them. (By the way: Kudos to Gingrich's political guess here. This seemed like a sure loser strategy -- how can you advance from behind when you never, ever take a shot at the leaders? In fact, it was so ill-calculated to win the nomination I suspected, with Ann Coulter, he really wasn't even running for the nomination, but just to keep his profile "pop culturally relevant," as a DC sage once said. But now it looks... well, pretty damn clever. All that was needed was a huge amount of dumb luck.)

How do you attack the guy who's actually defended you from media attacks in the past?

I suppose the only way to do this is to be very complimentary towards Gingrich yourself while, nevertheless, pointing out deviations from conservative economic doctrine.

But you can't imply, for example, he was corrupt in working for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After all the Nice Newt performances, that would backfire badly. You have to keep it only on policy, and ideology, and in the most respectful terms possible, as a personal matter.

Plus, if you gin up the compliments towards Newt (while skillfully questioning his conservative bona fides) you reduce the chance that he'll feel comfortable gutting you in return.

Tricky.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (163)
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Leon H. Wolf has a great piece at RedState today, Kneel Before Romney and Despair. It sheds light on the way the Romney campaign operates and how their modus operandi dovetails with Jennifer Rubin's approach to reporting. "Apparently tonight, Mitt Romney wants you to think Newt Gingrich is an idiot," Wolf writes, because of her post yeserday, Gingrich: The Phony Intellectual. Wolf explains:

What I do want to do is to shed a little light on something that is not a secret to literally anyone who has interacted with the Romney campaign. See, during the 2008 campaign I worked for Sam Brownback. During the course of the campaign I became friendly with someone who worked in the Romney campaignÂ’s communications department. After Brownback pulled a Pawlenty and bowed out after Ames, I reluctantly became a Romney supporter (viewing him as a far better choice than McCain). When I announced my support for Romney on the front page, I started receiving a steady deluge of emails from this friend pitching stories that wereÂ… well, pretty much exactly like the Newt Gingrich attack piece Jen Rubin wrote today.

Much more at the link.

After I read the Drudge headline yesterday about Gingrich going ahead in Iowa, I posed a bet to Ace and the co-, open-, and guest-bloggers. I bet them $5.00 Rubin would have a Newt bashing piece up by 10:00 a.m. the next day (today). Ace wrote back about a minute later, "RD, she has a piece up now calling him a 'Phony Intellectual.'" Zoinks. So I replied that it was too obvious and posed a second bet: "Okay, $5.00 says she'll have another Newt bashing piece by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow." No takers.

Well, if someone had gotten-in on that action, they would have been $5.00 richer. Because Gingrich: How Can He Rehabilitate Himself? came out at 10:15. I missed it by 15 minutes.

When you can set your watch by Jennifer Rubin posts that target the latest Romney threat, well, there is a problem.

Guest-blogger Moe Lane also has an item about Rubin today at RedState, Is Jen Rubin using Andrew Ferguson to sneak an anti-Perry sneer in? Moe says, "[W]hile I was reading this Jen Rubin Washington Post article targeting the latest anti-RomneyÂ… excuse me, I meant to type out 'Newt Gingrich,' thereÂ…" He goes on to examine some apparently overheated rhetoric about Ferguson's coverage of Perry.

Thanks to Ben Domenech. Follow me on Twitter.

Update: Others are noticing. Jeffery Lord at American Spectator. Scott Galupo at USNWR.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 09:45 AM | Comments (139)
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If agents are going to jump on Cain every time he says something stupid, they are all going to spend a lot of time on the ground.

Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon said Thursday night that the campaign asked for the protection after The Washington Post posted an article online that morning detailing a series of physical skirmishes involving journalists at Cain rallies

...

On the campaign trail, Cain “draws anywhere from a dozen to 50 media at his events," Gordon said. "When he gets out at a rally or a campaign stop, it has been increasingly common for media to be physically putting themselves and others in danger by trying to follow him with a lot of heavy equipment and cameras in close quarters like we saw yesterday."

Maybe there's a more sinister and legitimate reason for this. After all, I doubt the Secret Service would agree to this just to protect Cain from himself.

But again this just shows the amateurish nature of Team Cain. Why give people this talking point? All they had to say was, "A request was made for Secret Service protection for Mr. Cain. We thank the members of Congress and the administration charged with making the decision for agreeing to our request. We look forward to working with the dedicated professionals at the Secret Service who do so much for our nation. Beyond that, the campaign will have no comment on matters of security". See? Not so hard.

Update: What they should have said yesterday, today.

Herman Cain's campaign is pushing back against the suggestion it requested Secret Service protection as a way to keep media at bay and limit the access reporters will have to the candidate.

"It has nothing to do with the media, it has nothing to do with reporters," campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon said of the request for Secret Service protection.

Gordon said the campaign had requested protection "a couple weeks ago" after having received a series of threats. But Gordon said he would not comment on the nature of the threats or any specific instances.

For me this story wasn't about the protection itself. If Cain needs it and the Secret Service agrees, then give it to him.

The issue, as it so often is with Team Cain, is basic competence. Even if they did want it to manage the press, don't say it out loud.

People were under the impression the request was because of the media not from thin air but from Cain's spokesman. That's on them, not the people who listened to them.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:27 AM | Comments (115)
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