Obama has set up another stupid website to help "fight the smears" against him.

President Thin Skin has revamped his old and patently dishonest “Fight the Smears” Website under a new name, “Attack Watch”. With a hip and slightly spooky black, white and red motif, it aims to correct the terrible, awful things people say about the Dear Leader. He doesn’t want to take away your guns, he really *hearts* Israel, just listen to what world leaders say! He’s deported more Mexicans than anybody, ever! He’s created (or saved) eleventy million jobs! etc! etc!

Another writer noted this was his fourth such effort.

Below, one of the funnier parody videos I've seen. Content Warning, because it says something mean about one Palin's kids. But the video means it ironically -- like, "Oh you can use smears like this, just not anything true about Obama." But be warned if you think you'd react poorly to that.

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Posted by: Ace at 08:08 AM | Comments (298)
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I don't believe it. Gawker and the rest of these are trashy link-bait. They caveat this, saying the story could just wind up something like "Strains of Office Take Toll on President," your standard issue Man at a Crossroads piece, without mentioning depression.

But they say they know for a fact that reporters believe the depression angle, even if they don't print that.

Either way, Gawker's covered, aren't they? All we know is that there is probably a "President Takes Little Joy In Duty" story.

But, I can't really resist, so:

We hear the New York Times is looking into whether it's all starting to get to him—like, clinically.

We're told by a source inside the Times that the paper is preparing a story arguing that Obama no longer finds joy in the political back-and-forth, has seemed increasingly listless to associates, and is generally exhibiting the litany of signs that late-night cable commercials will tell you add up to depression.

...

So the story in question, if it ever comes out, may not end up supporting the depression thesis. But rest assured: There are people at the Times who, based on the paper's reporting, believe Obama is depressed—the kind of depression where, if he weren't the president of the United States, he wouldn't be getting out of bed in the morning.

I could understand if he were depressed. He didn't seem to have a very realistic idea of his own capabilities, or the capabilities, even, of the office of the presidency; he seemed to think that everything would just work out, and he'd move from success to success, adoration to adoration.

Obviously that has not been the case. And perhaps he's getting, as we've often speculated, his first cold splash of welcome to the real world.

And as we've also discussed, that would be sort of a scary thing.

Posted by: Ace at 06:24 AM | Comments (305)
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To save time, I will just say he includes a lot of caveats. And they're not fake caveats; they're real this-may-not-mean-anything caveats.

But caveats aside:

The Republican Mark Amodei, however, leads by 22 points as of this writing, an easy victory, meaning that he overperformed the P.V.I. [Partisan Voter Index, aka, Party advantage] by 12 points.

Meanwhile, Mr. TurnerÂ’s winning margin in the New York district, 8 percentage points as of this writing, represents a 18-point G.O.P. swing from the P.V.I.-projected results.

[Then add in Democrats overperforming in NY-23 by 17 points, but Republicans overperforming in that California race we lost, but not by all that much.]

... Republicans have overperformed the P.V.I. baseline by an average of 7 percentage points across the four races. That squares with what we saw in 2010, when Republicans won the popular vote for the House by an aggregate of 7 percentage points.

In other words, the four special elections, taken as a whole, suggest that Democrats may still be locked in a 2010-type political environment.

This, he says, probably wouldn't mean too many Republican pick-ups, as we've picked up most of the ones we can realistically grab. (But there is that cute scientist woman in Arizona who deserves a seat...)

But the real problem comes in Senate races. The Democrats have, once again, twice as many senators up for reelection than we do, and on top of that, they have a lot of blue senators in red states up for reelection.

He concludes:

Based on multiple regressions of the data, the evidence is suggestive, if not yet conclusive: President Obama is a stuttering clusterf*** of a miserable failure.

Okay, he didn't conclude that. But let's not split hairs.

Posted by: Ace at 06:04 AM | Comments (84)
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All the Federal “Jobs training” programs teach is bad work habits. Hours and hours of "diversity" training, sexual-harassment training, and conformance to the thousands of federal rules and regulations. But actual, you know, work skills? Not so much. Basically, Federal jobs training programs only train people to work in the Federal government. And I use the term "work" very loosely.

If Greece can leave the Eurozone, anyone can. That's the bureaucrats' true fear in expelling Greece from the Euro: it may cause a domino effect that blows the whole thing to flinders. But the architects of this flawed currency union never anticipated the problems that face the Eurozone now, so there's no fallback position or Plan B. The whole thing is coming to a crisis right now.

Could the Eurozone's problems sink us as well? A collapse of the Eurozone would put the hurt on the world economy, no doubt, but our biggest problems are of our own making.

If you just can't get enough of the Eurozone trainwreck that is unfolding before our very eyes, you can get your "Eurozone crisis porn" right here.

The job-seekerÂ’s paradox. ItÂ’s going to be a hard world for people who have trouble adapting to fluid work situations.

Depressing economic statistic of the day: your grand-dad made more money than you do. But he didn't have 24x7 access to terabytes of (essentially free) online porn, so at lease we've got that going for us.

Teh Krugman, hoist on his own petard. And never was a blackguard so righteously busted.

Hey, I know how to save the Euro! Let's turn the banks into mutual funds! (I immediately conjure up the scene of Wile E. Coyote rubbing his hands together and muttering, "Gad, I'm such a genius!")

WSJ: Get ready for the hosing of a lifetime, businesses. The tax-man cometh. Funny how the "fair share" that we're supposed to pay keeps going up, isn't it?

Who's to blame for the U.S. Economy? Everybody. There are no good guys in this crime story. We got our own asses into this crack -- and when I say "we", I mean the citizens of this Republic. We elected the idiots who now infest our state houses and the Federal Capitol. We chose to far outspend our personal incomes. We chose not to save for our own futures. We chose not to invest in R&D, but rather squander our money on impulse purchases. If we want to see the villain, all we have to do is look in the mirror.

Debt is not an inherently bad thing; it is just a financial tool like any other. But like any powerful tool, it can cause great harm if used improperly, and we've been misusing this particular tool for a long time now.

China decides not to take on that expensive European mistress after all. Besides, the local girls are just as lovely and are more appreciative.

Annals of the boned: San Francisco's public-sector pension battle is heating up. I call this the "blue on blue" war being waged in the economy right now, as liberal public-sector spending programs compete with each other for a shrinking pool of public money.

Rhode Island, the bantamweight member of the LOTB who has lately been contending with the big guys, is warning of a "death spiral" for the tiny state's public-sector pensions.

Tyler Cowen on neo-Keynesianism vs paleo-Keynesianism.

Confused by the Right on macro, youÂ’re a New Old Keynesian; confused by the Left, youÂ’re an Old New Keynesian.

Retail sales in August were flat, and promise to remain so for the rest of the year. That's going to put a crimp in temporary holiday-season hiring.

UPDATE 1: From Ben in the comments, Chrysler's war on the young. Take it easy on the young 'uns, you older folks; they're going to be funding your Social Security check. Or maybe they won't. Know what I mean?

UPDATE 2: Good advice to Greece from a guy who knows what he's talking about. If you're going to default anyway, you might as well go big and get as much debt off your books as you can -- the market won't thank you for going small.
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Posted by: Monty at 04:55 AM | Comments (155)
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Solyndra's CEO and its Chief Financial Officer will skip today's House hearing that is investigating why the company got a suspect loan guarantee from the Obama Administration. They asked to appear next week instead:

Brian Harrison, Solyndra's president and CEO and Chief Financial Officer Wilbur Stover requested the delay and told House GOP aides late Monday theyÂ’re not planning to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights when they appear next week.

FBI agents searched HarrisonÂ’s home earlier this month as part of an investigation with the Energy DepartmentÂ’s inspector general regarding SolyndraÂ’s handling of $535 million in federal loan guarantees.

Last month, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and laid off 1,100 workers.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will still question two Obama Admin officials who had input into the deal. At the top of the agenda: did the Obama Administration rush the deal for a photo op; and why did the Bush Administration say no to a loan guarantee for Solyndra?

Apparently, OMB projections at the time of the loan showed that Solyndra would run out of money in 2011. Actually September 2011. It sounds an awful lot like the risks were known. Did the Obama White House disagree with the risk assessment or just not care? I think we know the answer to this, but it will be instructive to watch a pair of Administration officials try and talk their way around it without perjuring themselves.

*Pic courtesy of @CuffyP.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:20 AM | Comments (137)
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The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:57 AM | Comments (103)
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First, Turkey threatened to send gunboats with the next Palestinian flotilla.

Now this.

Turkey has developed a new radar system for its US-made F-16 fighter jets that will allow them to fire at Israeli targets, AnkaraÂ’s Star Gazete reported on Tuesday. The orders to modify the system reportedly came directly from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoganÂ’s office.

Look, there is going to be a war. I'm not sure it's avoidable. I'm not sure if I even care to avoid it.

People are going to die, and I hope it's the right people.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 PM | Comments (138)
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Congratulations, Representative-Elect Turner.

From the New York Times:

National Republican leaders immediately trumpeted the victory as a sign of trouble for Mr. Obama’s re-election effort. “An unpopular President Obama is now a liability for Democrats nationwide,” Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement.

But Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said the districtÂ’s large concentration of Orthodox Jews made it unusual and meant the race had few national ramifications.

“In this district, there is a large number of people who went to the polls tonight who didn’t support the president to begin with and don’t support Democrats — and it’s nothing more than that,” she said in a telephone interview.

As Mr. Turner declared that the election had been a referendum on the president, his buoyant supporters, gathered at a restaurant in Howard Beach, Queens, shouted “Yes, we can,” appropriating the galvanizing phrase of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign. Mr. Turner predicted that voters elsewhere would also rebuke Mr. Obama in the elections next year.

“We have lit one candle today,” he said. “It’s going to be a bonfire pretty soon.”

Mr. Weprin, however, did not concede defeat.

“This is not over yet; this is going to be a long night,” he said in brief comments to his supporters at a pub in Forest Hills, Queens. “Hopefully we can still pull this out.”

That's what Weiner said. Ba-dum-dum. more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 PM | Comments (484)
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Congratulations, Representative Amodei.

In NY-9, Turner is concerned about fraud, and has asked that all ballots be impounded.

Turner campaign manager E. O'Brien Murray told me Tuesday afternoon that their campaign is concerned the close race in New York's 9th CD could very well be tainted by voter fraud from the David Weprin camp, and the Turner campaign does not want to be blind-sided.

"Last night we filed with one of the judges and then today we were attempting to serve Weprin. We served the board of elections last night to this morning. I'm not too sure of the timing of it," said Murray.

Under New York State law a registered voter of the state must apply for a ballot in order to get an absentee ballot. According to the Turner camp, they suspect that someone over at the board of elections sent out absentee ballots to deceased people and to people who have not requested them.

"There's been significant evidence of election fraud occurring. There have been in at least five occurrences of deceased individuals receiving absentee ballots which cannot happen legally," said Turner campaign spokesman William O'Reilly. O'Reilly added, "Other people who have not applied for absentee ballots have received ballots, which is against the law in New York State. They haven't even applied for them, but they received them."

Turner is ahead, but not by so much I feel good.

Posted by: Ace at 07:33 PM | Comments (106)
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Pass this jobs bill. Would we f*** you over twice?

Nah, just once. Only once. Swearsies!

Posted by: Ace at 06:42 PM | Comments (79)
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