Amazing.

Read down to Allen West's rejoinder. Absolute moral authority combined with an absolute slam.

The black lobby has always muddied what they considered racism -- is racism actually racism, or is "racism" simply opposing the black political left's laundry list of programmatic preferences?

Carson makes it pretty clear he doesn't even care about actual racism any more, and all he means by it is opposing the Congressional Black Caucus.

Well, then all it means is "anti-liberal." Congratulations. You've officially turned "racist" into a sort of goofball self-description like "Playa-Hata" people might proudly wear on t-shirts.

OUT: We shall overcome.

IN: We shall overspend.

Posted by: Ace at 06:58 PM | Comments (165)
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Was flying all day so you know what that means: teh sux0r 0NT.

How To Get The Girl...According To Movies

Ok I think having feet and ruining her wedding are probably achievable for most of the morons.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:08 PM | Comments (791)
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Kind of a recurring theme in the Obama administration, we'll tell you what's good for your economy. And if we decide your acquisition of T-Mobile is "bad for America", we don't have a problem at all forcing your commitment to pay your competitor $3 billion to its parent Deutsche Telekom because we pulled you out against your will.

Not to mention airspace and a roaming agreement worth considerably more.

The termination requirements are designed to protect Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile in a particularly precarious deal, said Robert Bell, co-chairman of law firm Kaye Scholer's antitrust practice group. Waiting for the controversial proposal to go through could leave T-Mobile vulnerable as key employees consider leaving and competitors circle, Bell said.

"Agreeing to this fee was part of the price AT&T had to pay to convince T-Mobile to go forward, to take a calculated risk in this transaction" he said. "Typically, the longer it takes to get to closing, the more problematic it can be for the seller. You're really putting your company in limbo."

Someone remind me again why businesses are unwilling to invest capital to expand right now? Why they want to punish Obama by sitting on their capital and adopting a wait and see attitude?

What could it be, what could it be?

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:38 PM | Comments (87)
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Breaking: Obama takes the offered Thursday date.

Very good (at least, it's interesting) piece on the Palin/O'Donnell confusion in Indianola from ABCNews.

It gets at a point I was just making to Russ From Winterset in emails: Many people find it charming and authentic that Palin is planning her campaign (or non-campaign) at a kitchen table with her husband and a very small number of confidantes, but that leads to a disorganized sort of disorganization.

But then it goes on to the O'Donnell matter:

According to rally organizers, O'Donnell reached out to the Tea Party of America and asked to speak. Crow agreed, and on Monday she was invited to speak. Crow said that almost immediately, the group received negative e-mails and at that point "panicked" and decided to rescind the invitation. (They added that O'Donnell's team was "less than truthful" about her current relationship with Palin, implying it was closer than it actually is.) On Tuesday, Crow said he decided to re-invite O'Donnell because "it was the right thing to do and we made a mistake." O'Donnell tweeted that she "humbly re-accepted the re-invitation" to speak.

But then that offer was rescinded. And Palin's team confirmed the former Alaska governor was indeed back on board.

Did anyone in this Tea Party of America think about asking Palin about that? Or are we operating on the Honor System here? (True Conservatives always tell the truth!)

Honestly. I don't get it. Naiete is not a virtue.

More on that:

Then on Wednesday, Palin's team "put the event on hold" and one of the things on Crow's list of "mistakes" that he needed to correct was informing O'Donnell that she was back off. Crow said that he "found out we in fact had been lied to by her [O'Donnell's] people and we didn't want to participate. I didn't want to expose the governor to that sort of stuff."

It seems O'Donnell stretched the current relationship she has with Palin, whose endorsement led to her beating Rep. Mike Castle in the 2010 Delaware senate race. One of the Tea Party of America organizers said it's just not the case: "I can tell you that the governor and Ms. O'Donnell have not spoken in a year, but that's none of my business."

O'Donnell did not return requests for comment left with her publicity firm.

It gets very difficult when so many of your political allies are swearing someone must be a wonderful, sweet woman, and yet the vibe you've always gotten is "shifty fame-hound."

Clarification: I am referring to O'Donnell. I've said it. I will keep on saying it. You cannot judge a candidate solely on ideology unless you have some master plan to insure that only your ideological sole-mates vote.

Meanwhile, Jim DeMint says he'll do what he can to block the Joint Address, in the Senate.

“The president should pick another night. I’m planning to watch the Republican primary debate … and the president should watch it, too,”

The iconic South Carolina conservative said. “If he has a jobs proposal, put it in writing, give us a cost estimate, and send it over. I want to read the bill, not listen to talking points off a TelePrompter. If he insists on playing politics by picking the night of the GOP debate, I will object to the session.”

A lone determined senator can tie the chamber in knots for days, and the House and Senate must both pass a concurrent resolution to allow for the president to speak to a joint session.

Mark Levin says he hears Obama may just do an Oval Office address if Congress balks. This could work for him. It was speculated the whole point of calling a Joint Session was to force networks to cover him. And they are getting tired of giving him very pricey prime-time slots to speak in. But a Joint Session is fairly rare and networks wouldn't balk for that kind of speech.

However, now that he's raised the stakes for this, it could be that a simple White House address would get covered by everyone.

All Obama really needs is a chair, a desk, a camera, and a pair of teleprompters (plus a back-up emergency teleprompter, of course).

That's unconfirmed, though; Levin isn't certain of it. The Right Scoop passed that tidbit along.

Boehner denies he ever agreed to the Wednesday date for the speech. The White House "notified" him they were seeking that time, then announced it to the press, before Boehner had answered.

Posted by: Ace at 04:40 PM | Comments (265)
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Charles Martin gives some reasons why he's skeptical of Global Warming. It's a decent read which includes some killer quotes I'm dying to share with you.

All modeling efforts will inevitably converge on the result most likely to lead to further funding.

Anyone with a unbiased eye who looks into it will find any number of people who have found that a model that predicts more warming gets funded; a model that predicts relatively less warming gets less funding. Pre-tenure researchers in particular are warned away from results that don’t fit orthodoxy.

YES! This work is done by humans with human weaknesses.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:15 PM | Comments (43)
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Shameless.

The ground zero mosque, called Park 51, has applied for a $5 million grant of federal funds from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The Corporation, set up to rebuild lower Manhattan after 9-11 is actively considering the grant request. Imagine! A federal entity set up to rebuild lower Manhattan giving tax money to a mosque designed to celebrate the attacks that killed 3,000 Americans!

...

Officially, the federal funds would not go to religious activities, but to “fund social service programs for all the residents of Lower Manhattan such as domestic violence prevention, Arabic and other foreign language classes, programs and services for homeless veterans, two multi-cultural art exhibits and immigration services,” according to its grant application.

Uh-huh.

None of it goes to religious activities. In a mosque.

Posted by: Ace at 04:14 PM | Comments (252)
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Good piece on the danger of raising expectations.

The current squabble over the timing will elevate this speech's importance.

Can Obama rise to that challenge?

Um... does he usually rise to challenges?

On the surface, it might appear to be a good political strategy: gear up the public for a big announcement down the road and maximize attention to it. But in practice, the strategy is fraught with dangers, as the elder Bush found to his regret.

In the period between when Bush said he would unveil a plan and the actual rollout, public expectations for a magic solution skyrocketed to heights that no plan could have reached. After all, if there was some sure-fire cure for the nationÂ’s economic ills, wouldnÂ’t it have been tried by then?

Nonetheless, White House aides and strategists hyped the speech. They leaked hints of what might be coming and floated trial balloons in the news media to see how they might be received. BushÂ’s Democratic opponents gained tons of media attention criticizing the mythical plan from every angle, even though nothing had been officially proposed.

Inevitably, Bush lost control of the narrative to his critics. So when the much-ballyhooed speech was finally delivered, it crashed of its own weight. Obama could be facing a similar fate.

Here is what James Gerstenzang wrote in the Los Angeles Times on the eve of the 1992 Bush speech. Substitute ObamaÂ’s name for BushÂ’s and you have a textbook case of history repeating itself.

Now, the media will not be raising expectations here; instead, they will be emphasizing the difficulties Obama faces, and therefore lowering expectations as regards his abilities to overcome those difficulties.

Still, Obama is making this speech more prominent than it otherwise would have been.

George H.W. Bush proposed a mix of standard, unexciting, smaller-bore proposals to help spur the economy. They were greeted with yawns.

Obama is similarly hamstrung. He claims he wants to promote "bipartisan" solutions both parties can agree on, but the only stimulus the GOP would consider is a tax cut. Obama might propose another round of sending $400 checks to every citizen (as has happened before); but that seems desperate, and that also further worsens the debt problem.

So he can go small and bipartisan, which would wind up being greeted with indifference, or go big and liberal, which I think would be rejected outright. I don't think the public years for even more of what ails them.

He could try for that business payroll tax holiday I discussed two years ago, but paid for by what? He'd have to agree to cuts to domestic spending and entitlements (to take place, say, four years out) and he won't agree to that.

Swiped from Mickey Kaus.

Posted by: Ace at 03:13 PM | Comments (216)
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Well, not SCOAMF, per se, but a reasonable facsimile.

It updates unemployment, debt, polling data (Rasumussen's), housing prices, and gas prices. And how many days left of Obama's presidency.

Brilliant or not?

I'm going to go ahead an answer for you -- brilliant. Guy makes $0.99 a pop and what are his costs? Nothing.

Posted by: Ace at 02:35 PM | Comments (142)
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Obama's successes just keep piling on each other like kids playing Kill the Guy With The Meatball.

A California solar-panel manufacturer once touted by President Barack Obama as a beneficiary of his administration's economic policies — as well as a half-billion-dollar federal loan — is laying off 1,100 workers and filing for bankruptcy.

Solyndra LLC of Fremont, Calif., had become the poster child for government investment in green technology. The president visited the company in May 2010 and noted that Solyndra expected to hire 1,000 workers to manufacture solar panels. Other state and federal officials such as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Energy Secretary Steven Chu also visited the company's facilities.

But hard times have hit the nation's solar industry. Solyndra is the third solar company to seek bankruptcy protection this month. Officials said Wednesday that the global economy as well as unfavorable conditions in the solar industry combined to force the company to suspend its manufacturing operations.

Yes, global economic conditions are very hostile to solar right now, with oil prices at historic highs. I mean, you wouldn't want to compete when your competitors are extraordinarily expensive, would you?

Of course that would assume that solar competes with oil. It doesn't. Solar competes with ObamaCare, welfare, food stamps...for subsidies. In as much as it relies on government subsidization to continue on.

And that is why the "global economy" actually disfavors it. Less government money to move from one slush pile to another. This product is not sold to consumers; it is sold to governments and lobbyists and tax lawyers.

Thanks to Chad.

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (145)
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Although joint sessions of Congress take place in the House, there's not any particular reason Harry Reid couldn't invite Obama to the Senate.

Unfortunately for the GOP, this would result in increased coverage and public interest, as this would now be drama.

But unfortunately for Obama, it would still be Obama speaking. The same droning SCOAMF that never budges the public opinion needle when he talks.

If something like this were to happen, the story line would be Crazed House Declares War on President and the like. Not that I think the media has much power to budge the needle, either.

Our response would be to call attention to his delays and vacations. Is this the only day Obama doesn't have a late-afternoon tee-time?

Meanwhile, Obama's defenders are "fuming.

Republicans say ObamaÂ’s timing was intended to eclipse a major GOP presidential debate.

By the afternoon – as word of Boehner’s request leaked — Obama’s defenders were fuming over Boehner’s cheek in suggesting Sept. 8th — which would conflict with the NFL’s opening night matchup between the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers and New Orleans Saints.

Update: At Hot Air, Fox's Ed Henry reports the White House claiming they did clear the Wednesday date with Boehner, who lodged no objections when it was discussed.

This could have been Boehner saying "Let me check," or it could have been him making an error and not asking anyone else first.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (408)
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