Oh thank God. I had so worried about all those violated little girls (and boys) in Minnesota not only being needle-raped but also rendered mentally impaired.

[I]f you listened to Bachmann last night, itÂ’s clear that she believes this is the type of issue on which a presidential candidate must stand, must do the right thing, and cannot waver in putting this forth as a conservative principle lest we risk infecting millions of children with mental retardation.

Has this always been an enormous part of this warriorÂ’s soul? Apparently not.

By all appearances, she felt no need to mention, much less work towards stopping, a vaccination that, by her own standards, is an assault on liberty. Even more so actually. The HPV vaccination, while called mandatory, made available an opt-out provision so that the parental rights that she felt were so paramount could be protected in this decision. The Hepatitis B vaccination in Minnesota (state law since 1993) doesnÂ’t even require parental consent at all. And Hep BÂ’s communicability is similar to HPV in that it is primarily transmitted through intercourse, as opposed to being an airborne illness. Currently, no records can be found of Michele Bachmann sponsoring legislation in the Minnesota legislature to repeal the Hep B vaccination or to add a parental opt-out.

Congressman Bachmann served in the Minnesota congress for 5 years. In all that time, she never felt quite as driven by her parental instincts and conservative nature to decry or work to reverse what now she clearly consider to be an incredible breach of conservative values. I wonder whatÂ’s changed? Were the children of Minnesota not important enough? Is it only robbing a childhood if itÂ’s vaccinations that her opponent supported but the oneÂ’s back home are just fine? Did she lack the same leadership qualities then?

Ben, first of all, don't question Doctor Bachmann.

Second of all, your interpretation that she's some kind of, I don't know, opportunistic ignoramus is entirely ill-founded.

There is a much better explanation at hand, without throwing around allegations of cynical dishonesty.

It all likelihood, Doctor Bachmann did fight against the mandatory, no-consent STD vaccinations in Minnesota.

But, as is the case with all of her big presidential-qualifying fights, she just lost.

Do not seek to explain by malice what can more easily be explained by incompetency, and also, malice.

By the way, who gotz PAID, son!, for those Hep B boondoggles in a needle?

Someone must have gotten paid. Where are the whistleblowers?

Explanation? I have a source who I trust implicitly, because he just showed up five minutes ago and therefore has never lied to me before.

Plus, he posts under a fake name, which you all know is just license to tell the truth.

Anyway, "man in a lab coat" explains this apparent inconsistency of Doctor Bachmann:

We sent that special "non-retard" batch of vaccine to Minnesota. All the rest of it was pretty much crazy-juice.

There you go.

But who gotz paid, SON!, for the "good" vaccines?

Posted by: Ace at 01:45 PM | Comments (423)
Post contains 558 words, total size 4 kb.

AttackWaaaatch, the website whose font is Waffen Sans Serif, was covered by the Washington Post today.

As I noted earlier, the headline was:

Attack Watch, new Obama campaign site to ‘fight smears,’ becomes laughing stock of the Internet

Emphasis added. Laughingstock of the Internet.

And their headline now?

Attack Watch, new Obama campaign site to ‘fight smears,’ becomes laughing stock of Conservatives

Ah, so now it's not the laughingstock of the Internet, but merely of "conservatives."

What happened? Did AttackWaaatch's rapid-response Blitzkreig go into effect, sturming over the Washington Post's Maginot line of editorial independence?

I argued with Allah about when, or if, AttackWatch would be relaunched using some website template besides the current FuturoGoebbels.

I predicted "changed by 6pm." It looks like I'm going to lose that bet (luckily, Allah did not take the $5 action, or at least we couldn't resolve terms).

One thing I didn't think of -- right now they're telling themselves, "Oh sure, they're laughing, but they're actually talking about it, driving millions of eyes to the site via free (viral) media, where they can read our absurd claims about Perry's and Romney's 'lies' about Obama."

And actually I think that's right.

So maybe they'll change it this weekend. Or they'll see if it's still getting mocked on the internet -- ooops, I mean by conservatives -- before they actually change it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (188)
Post contains 247 words, total size 2 kb.

Joe McGuinness' stalker diary, tentatively entitled "Prosecution Exhibit 1-A in The People vs. Joe McGuinness, is getting, of course, the expected amount of media push.

Actually, I shouldn't say that; the, um, "professional" media (and I use that term advisedly) isn't pushing it much, I guess because it seems pretty sleazy and implausible. They're letting the dirt-pushing Alternative But Also Liberal Media of the tabloids and left-leaning blogs do the lifting here.

Anyway, Say Anything has a story about how Joe McGuinness tried to get him to claim that Sarah Palin's dad was some kind of pedophile-enabler. (Say Anything actually knows the Heaths and Palins, so would be a "source" if only he would go ahead and give his blessing of Joe McGuinness' pre-written storyline.)

And that's really all that needs to be said about that.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (59)
Post contains 162 words, total size 1 kb.

That was a Newsbusters headline about the 9/11 shame piece.

I'm stealing it.

Paul Krugman, demented liar.

Paul Krugman, malignant dwarf.

Paul Krugman is literally willing to contradict any accepted fact in his field -- and even repudiate all of his old writings -- in order to get a single cheap anti-Republican column out.

There is quite literally nothing he will not lower his already quite-low self to claim. He believes that scholarship is a weakness, and admires what he sees as the dishonest but effective ruthlessness of the GOP; he's adopted what he believes are our tactics. He thinks scholars are nebbishes (okay, most are), and so has decided to re-make himself as a fire-spewing Internet Tough Guy Ignoramus.

Okay. He got part of that done. He is an ignoramus. At least he's profoundly ignorant about what he himself has written in the past.

Woody Allen should pull the younger Paul Krugman out from behind a wall to lecture the older Paul Krugman: "You know nothing of my work..."

But as they say, beware of seeking out monsters to fight, else you become a monster yourself.

In Krugman's case, this would be a stunted sort of monster, like a goblin or some other 1/2 hit die pest. Not the big, puffed-up scary sort of monster he imagines himself to be as he dashes off one deranged, dementia-addled screed after another.

Credit: JohnnyE., plus some likely lead poisoning

Highbrow Truther: College Politico has an interesting take on Krugman-- he calls him a "Highbrow Truther." By which he means that Krugman, while not endorsing the factual claims made by Truthers (which would cause him too much professional embarrassment), nevertheless seems to hint around the edges of a massive conspiracy, just not (necessarily) one with government demolition teams.

P-shop by JohnnyE.

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (147)
Post contains 305 words, total size 2 kb.

"Tipping point."

Lately, I have been making the case (and others may have as well) that weÂ’re nearing a tipping point for the PresidentÂ’s personal standing. If his job approval ratings were weak, eventually swing voters would no longer view him as the shining star he believes himself to be. Â…
Continue Reading
[L]ooking just at intensity, his numbers have gone from 29% very positive/18% very negative in January to 27% very positive/24% very negative in June. In August? They flipped upside down — going from June’s +3 to a -6 now — 24% very positive/30% very negative. Intensity is crucial to watch — 30% or higher on very positive is a very strong score, while on very negative is a sign of significant weakness. August marks the first month there has been significantly more voters very negative than very positive. …

As Stace McCain points out, this isn't complicated. It's just SCOAMF. There is only so much disaster-control you can do. When you're in a disaster, you can spin it as "not that bad" or "not my fault" (believe it or not -- turns out Obama inherited Solyndra from Bush, too; bet you didn't see that one coming), but you cannot actually spin or speechify a horrific state of affairs into a positive one.

Breitbart says there's an "internal civil war" in the Democratic Party now, as the party begins a long-delayed reckoning with Obama and his policies.

Has he heard something? Maybe. But it's also being generally talked about.

Even before the polls closed,Mb> the recriminations — something short of panic, and considerably more than mere grumbling — had begun. On a high-level campaign conference call Tuesday afternoon, Democratic donors and strategists commiserated over their disappointment in Obama. A source on the call described the mood as “awful.”

“People feel betrayed, disappointed, furious, disgusted, hopeless,” said the source.

Less expansive but equally telling were the remarks of House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, who in a conversation with reporters Tuesday morning said bluntly that Obama would take some blame for the two special election losses.

“I think every election reflects on the person in charge, but do I think it is an overall statement on the president alone? No,” said Hoyer. “Do I think it will be interpreted as being a statement on Obama? That’s probably correct.”

A senior Hill Democratic aide was more direct in attempting to explain the New York loss: “The approval ratings for the guy at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue cratered.”

Now that's self-serving by the Democrats in Congress, too -- They went along with all this, yes? They voted for ObamaCare over the vigorous protest of the American public, yes?

I wouldn't say Congressional Democrats are right in trying to pin all the blame on Obama.

But it is notable that "Blame Bush" is becoming "Blame Obama."

The brilliant Rara Avis with the All-Ivy education seems to have never heard the first lesson of politics: Vox Populi, Vox Dei. For three miserable, arrogant years he has governed directly against the wishes of the public, gambling that he knew everything, and we knew nothing, and so, at the end of his three year Rogue Regime, the fruits of his wisdom would fatten on the tree, and we would see how wrong we were, and drink the nectar of his successes.

But that's not what happened. He repeatedly ignored the wishes of the public and the loyal opposition in the GOP.

Therefore, he owns this situation. Him and the Democrats, entirely. They did not share decision-making, so they cannot now demand we all share in the blame.

He bet on himself, and more importantly, he bet against the American people, and the longstanding traditions of America.

He lost. He lost big. He lost it all.

And he has no one to blame but his ego. And maybe his early mentors who filled his head with radical socialist twaddle.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (320)
Post contains 684 words, total size 5 kb.

Get in line, fellers.

No that's terrible. It really is a gross invasion of privacy.

Well not gross. "Heroic," is the word.

No seriously, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Except, maybe, Scarlett Johansson, as it turns out. And maybe Zooey Deschanel. But only those two.

Posted by: Ace at 10:52 AM | Comments (269)
Post contains 72 words, total size 1 kb.

Why do I say "oh no"?

Two reasons. Every once in a while Obama fails so badly that I start to feel sympathy for him. He's in over his head. I don't think he was really even running for president in 2008 -- I think he expected Hillary to win. He was just getting his name out there for 2012 or 2016.

I think this all comes as a rough shock to him.

And I am starting to get worried that he may also be in over his head psychologically. It's a bad thing if a President is actually teetering on the edge, isn't it?

I've gotten a tip from someone that the Gawker story is not bullshit; that the Times reporters really were working that depression angle.

The other reason for the "oh no" is that if AttackWatch is officially a laughingstock, that means they're going to pull it.

The response to the site has been less than stellar.

On Twitter, where the Web site has an account to help Obama supporters submit evidence of “attacks” on the president using the hashtag #attackwatch, nearly every tweet about the site has ridiculed it.

“There's a new Twitter account making President Obama look like a creepy, authoritarian nutjob,” an Arizonan tweeted. “In less than 24 hours, Attack Watch has become the biggest campaign joke in modern history,” a contributor to conservative blog The Right Sphere wrote.

[They link that AttackWaaaaatch video here.]

...

Attack Watch, [as opposed to the less-scary "Fight the Smears" website], used the shorter — and somewhat scaremongering — tag­line, “Get the Truth. Fight the Smears.”

It’s safe to say that in its 24 hours of existence, Attack Watch has already backfired in drumming up support for Obama 2012. This tweet summed it up: “Wow, not only are Obama & Co. incredibly thin-skinned, they're paranoid.”

I think we've reached that much-discussed tipping point.

The liberals, and the media (but I, as ever, repeat myself), have long protected Obama. While doing so, however, they were frustrated by him; they pushed their disappointment with him deep down.

But at some point, comes a tipping point, where you get license to say what you really think; you could keep suppressing that, but now you've got a justification to cut loose. (Yes, this is what has happened to me with respect to Palin and Bachmann; the mental retardation/unfounded accusations of crony capitalism were, to me, an announcement that the "Hey, guys, let's not fiiight" rules were no longer in effect.)

This is not only a pretext for some long-suppressed venting at Obama, by the media, but probably a catalyst for even more of it.

And you know what's not going to friggin' help? This.

Thanks to Slublog.

Et Tu, CBS? Even quoting Dan Riehl now?

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (350)
Post contains 489 words, total size 3 kb.

...since the Solyndra Stimulus Bill speech.

Lot of bad news here for the Clinical Depressive of the United States.

By a margin of 51 percent to 40 percent, Americans doubt the package of tax cuts and spending proposals intended to jumpstart job creation that Obama submitted to Congress this week will bring down the 9.1 percent jobless rate....

Compounding ObamaÂ’s challenge is that 56 percent of independents, whom the president won in 2008 and will need to win in 2012, are skeptical it will work.

Yeah, it won't. Next.

On the economy, 29 percent of independents approve of the job Obama is doing while 66 percent disapprove. Obama is weakest among independents when it comes to his ability to reduce the deficit -- under a quarter of those respondents approve of his job in that category, while 67 percent disapprove. On job creation, 30 percent of independents approve of ObamaÂ’s efforts while 63 percent disapprove. He scored slightly better among independents on health care with 34 percent approving and 57 percent disapproving.

57% disapproval on health care, among independents, is a relative strength for Obama.

The 29% re-elect figure is from another article, reported by Hot Air.

Mickey Kaus writes that what ought to alarm Democrats about yesterday's election was that Mediscare did not work.

Partly this is because the Democrats have cut $500 billion from Medicare and propose cutting still more.

While I'm very down on Michele Bachmann, I have to give her props for insisting that this inconvenient fact for Democrats be mentioned early and often. (Romney also mentioned it, but sort of off-handedly. It must be a central point.)

The Democrats, as I keep saying, proposing cutting Medicare but not reforming it; that means, ultimately, that $500 billion in cuts will result in just about $500 billion in actual service reduction.

If you reform Medicare, it's possible -- plausible; even likely -- that $500 billion in cuts will translate to some lesser amount of actual service reduction; maybe $500 billion in payment reduction will wind up only resulting in $360 billion in service reduction. Still a hit, but not as much of one.

And yet, for some reason, Kaus and the Democrats think it's a good thing, something to brag on, that Democrats keep cutting Medicare without making actual reforms to the system that might make it do more with less. So every dollar in cuts is just a straight-up dollar less in benefit.

Odd.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (118)
Post contains 422 words, total size 3 kb.

Hm. That "clinical depression" story posted earlier looks a little less dubious now.

Someone alert AttackWatch; someone is spreading awful lies that the president is using the sorts of passive-aggressive psychological ploys a menstrual fifteen year old girl uses.

Obama talked about his proposal to pay for the plan by raising taxes on big corporations and the wealthy, an idea that has not sat well with Republicans in Congress.

"We need to build an economy that lasts," he said. "If you love me, you gotta help me pass this bill."

Update: But see "Context" at post's end.

Little bonus: He goes on to say now that his proposed tax hikes would pay for "most" of his new Solyndra Bill.

Most.

Well, we really have stepped back an awfully long way from the initial claim that "All of this is paid for." First we got a walk-back from the present tense, now we get a walk-back from "all."

Personally, I think there's a greater way to demonstrate love. Merely doing favors? People do favors for friends, or people they don't even like.

No -- if you love somebody, if you truly love somebody, there's only one way to really show that. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:26 AM | Comments (309)
Post contains 259 words, total size 2 kb.

Actually, that slights Gingrich, who has gained; he has risen, while she has fallen.

Sorry, but Michele Bachann's "mental retardation" like proved all the suspicions I had about her: That she is a flake, that her defining trait is not ideological integrity but personal ambition, that she was willing to toss out any sort of smelly red meat she imagined would get her cheers from a crowd, and that she sort of lives in a fantasy world of fantasy politics, distant, as Barack Obama once was, from any kind of actual responsibility or accountability.

I'm not sure if I even believe "some woman came up to her crying hysterically." I'd like details of this impromptu diagnosis Doctor Bachmann performed for this Mystery Gardasil Victim. I'd like to know, for starters, what age this poor girl was when she came down with a case of Late Onset Mental Retardation, given that the drug is only given to 11-18 year olds. I'd like to know what verification techniques the Bachmann Institute For Mentally Retarded Studies employed to ensure this case history was not, what's the word?, completely made-up.

I suspect that Doctor Bachmann didn't meet any hysterically-crying woman, but instead did a friggin' internet search herself, and came up with some (disproven, debunked, made up for a lawsuit) connection between the MMR vaccine (given to young kids) and autism, and then just made up the rest, sticking "Gardasil" in there, swapping out "autism" for "mental retardation."

This is what happens when IRS collections agents practice medicine without a license.

Surely this poor woman provided Doctor Bachmann with some kind of contact information. After all, she was praising Michele Bachmann for her novel work in Tweener Pediatrics; she probably wanted to keep in touch.

So where is this woman and her mentally-retarded tweener?

Since she wants to tell her story to the world, why does she not come forward and share it with a media that I'm sure wishes to speak with her?

Flake. Opportunist. Spotlight-seeking self-promoter. And an embarrassment.

"I read it on the Internet" is an ironic expression, expressing skepticism.

It's should not be taken, as Doctor Bachmann does, as a life motto.

Timing: Gabe points out that this poll was completed before the "mental retardation" claim, but also before the debate, in which some Perry supporters may have defected to Bachmann on this issue.

So, with a lot of information propagated since this poll, this poll may not be very relevant.

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (210)
Post contains 431 words, total size 3 kb.