Oh, yeah. Among the dozen other vote-moving things Romney could have brought up -- former Democratic governor and big Obama bundler Jon Corzine, either incompetent or thieving or, as it usually is, both.

So, he was at fault. I'm glad we know now, on November 13th.

In a summary of a report due for release on Thursday morning, Rep. Randy Neugebauer of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations said Corzine "dramatically changed MF Global's business model without fully understanding the risks associated with such a radical transformation."

The Republican-led subcommittee didn't directly address whether laws were broken at MF Global, but provided sharp criticism of Corzine's management. Mike Capuano, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, said that while he agreed with a number of the report's observations, he was not signing onto it because of insufficient time for review. He and other Democrats will instead submit an addendum to the majority's findings.

Can't wait for that addendum. Let me guess. "Mistakes were made."

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (243)
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How wonderful for us all.

Nancy Pelosi announced Wednesday that she plans to seek another term as House Democratic leader, though Democrats were unable to win back control of the chamber.

...

"We don't have the gavel," she said. "We have something more important, we have unity."

She later said: "I wouldn't think of walking away."

There was a minor controversy earlier when someone dared to ask Pelosi, 143, if she was too old to connect with people who are younger than 100.

A lot of whining about "Age discrimination!" and some boos follow.

I don't really have a point besides my "143" joke.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (217)
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Ed Henry points out that Obama admitted what had long been assumed (but not explicitly said), that Susan Rice was sent out to talk about Benghazi at the White House's request.

The rest of it is a smoghastbord of evasions and rehearsed feigned outrage.

"As I said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her. If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and besmirch her reputation is outrageous," President Obama said at a press conference on Wednesday.

I would like very much to "have that discussion." When shall we schedule it?

Also: "the intelligence she received." Passive voice. Why does he avoid saying who gave her the intelligence? It's a shifty construction. If there was nothing amiss, he should have no problems specifying who gave her this "intelligence."

You avoid naming names when you have something to hide.

Another point: He stresses she had "nothing to do with Benghazi." Okay: Why did you choose someone who had "nothing to do with Benghazi" to present your case on Benghazi? Why did you make certain it was someone insulated from actual knowledge?

Watch the video. It's sick-making.

Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, says he'll do everything he can to block Susan Rice's nomination, which I assume includes a filibuster.

If our party still has any spirit left.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (462)
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It's scheduled for 1:30 (EST), which I assume means it'll kick off at the crack of 1:56.

No one asked him if he really did not know about the Petraeus affair. Chuck Todd asked a question which assumed this claim was true. Obama seemed, to me, to be careful about not repeating that claim. He said vaguely he was "withholding judgment" on the whole "process" and did not, at first, repeat the claim that he didn't know.

Chuck Todd asked some sort of inaudible follow-up which seemed to question whether the investigators were right not to tell him. (Um, again assuming he's on the level when his underlings claim he wasn't told.) At this point he said something like, "In that case you'd be asking me about why I was interfering in an FBI investigation if we had been told."

Again, that sentence does not plainly say, from his own lips (not Jay Carney's) that he wasn't told. The last sentence does seem to say that, but, as we learned with Bill Clinton, anything short of a direct, unambiguous responsive question can be parsed ("when I said we weren't told, I mean the Office of the White House was not officially informed").

Eric, I Won: Obama is back in tough-guy mode. Obama is laying down a line of smack. He's claiming that Susan Rice is just an "easy target" and he's dick waving, "If you've got a problem, come after me."

Ed Henry of FoxNews asked him directly if he specifically gave any orders to rescue those in Benghazi. He is not answering the question. He said something vaguely about giving orders to "do whatever we need to do" to "make sure they're safe."

This is a very vague answer to a question which was about ordering military action to save them.

He answers something like "If you think we didn't do everything we could, you don't know the military."

Posted by: Ace at 09:23 AM | Comments (812)
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The video description:

On Nov. 11, 2012, the IDF targeted Ahmed Jabri, the head of Hamas' military wing, in the Gaza Strip. Jabri was a senior Hamas operative who served in the upper echelon of the Hamas' command and was directly responsible for executing terror attacks against Israel in the past.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (289)
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He promised 3-to-1, cuts to tax increases.

His actual proposal is exactly the opposite: 3 (close to 4) to 1, taxes to cuts.

Oh, and he's doubled his previous $800 billion in new taxes -- a level he claimed was reasonable -- to $1.6 trillion.

If the last ask was reasonable, what's the new one? Twice as reasonable, I imagine.

And he'll just keep on lying, because the media supports his lies. The media wants a more Europe-like socialist state, and they know the public will not vote for that, if it is put to them straight; so Obama lies, and the media "fact-checks" him and calls his lies the truth.

Before the election, the media did in fact note that Obama's "plan" for $3 trillion in cuts didn't add up. Even Andrea Mitchell noted this. But note that no one interrogated him on this point at a debate, as Jim Lehrer and Candy Crowely interrogated Romney on his tax cut plan. That plan, they said, didn't add up, and wanted to expose Romney to the public on this point.

Obama's plan, they acknowledged sotto voce, also didn't add up, but they didn't feel it was necessary to make a big point about this in a debate which 60 or 70 million people were watching. Such points are better made on daytime cable shows with ratings of 400,000 people... once. Wouldn't want the word to get out.

That Taste In Your Mouth

Is something I like to call "a balanced approach."

Posted by: Ace at 07:47 AM | Comments (265)
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Incredible.

Glenn Reynolds compares the similarities between Katrina and Sandy -- and notes the contrasts in the press' coverage of the story between Obama and Bush.

Is the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy turning into Katrina-on-the-Hudson? Pretty much, and that tells us some things about Sandy, and Katrina, and the press.

One parallel: A late evacuation order. Even before the storm struck, weatherblogger Brendan Loy -- famous for calling for early evacuation of New Orleans before Katrina struck -- criticizing Mayor Bloomberg for not ordering early or extensive enough evacuations in New York, and for making the "ignorant" statement that Sandy wouldn't be as bad as a hurricane.

...

So: late warnings, confused and inadequate responses, FEMA foul-ups and suffering refugees. In this regard, Sandy is looking a lot like Katrina on the Hudson. Well, things go wrong in disasters. That's why they're called disasters. But there is one difference.

Under Katrina, the national press credulously reported all sorts of horror stories: rapes, children with slit throats, even cannibalism. These stories were pretty much all false. Worse, as Lou Dolinar cataloged later, the press also ignored many very real stories of heroism and competence. We haven't seen such one-sided coverage of Sandy, where the press coverage of problems, though somewhat muted before the election, hasn't been marked by absurd rumors or ham-handed efforts to push a particular narrative.

Mary Katharine Ham notes that FEMA is doing a poor job of meeting citizens' needs, but the media doesn't think that's such a bad thing anymore.

But youÂ’d be hard-pressed to find a story about Sandy and FEMA without a sentence like this:

“She applied for FEMA assistance the day after Sandy hit, but said she hadn’t heard back.”

Or this:

“FEMA hasn’t done anything else. The inspector came out and he inspected the damage and that was it. He said he was going to forward it to his headquarters and I will hear from them, that’s it.” When asked if he has heard from anyone? Daily quickly responded, “No.”

Liberal critics always seize upon things like that to say "The media is reporting it, duh, that's where you're getting it," but there is a difference between a one or two sentence notation and "demanding answers" and "finding out who to blame" and running story after story on the incompetence of the head of FEMA and writing op-eds about the general lack of competence of the Administration and its general lack of compassion for citizens in need.

When the liberal media doesn't like someone, one sentence like "FEMA didn't call back" is the predicate for an editor assigning six or ten reporters to do follow-up stories. "Flood the zone," Howell Raine called this kind of coverage, when you assign a bunch of reporters to the story to insist to the public -- through repetition and devotion of resources -- that this is Important and the public Should Take This Very Seriously.

For God's sake, Anderson Cooper and Shep Smith were peddling Twitter hoaxes about people eating babies in the SuperDome.

You all know the head of FEMA under Bush: Michael Brown. The media made sure you did.

Can you name Obama's head of FEMA?

No, right? You can't, right?

That's because the media is not conducting a flood-the-zone campaign against him, as they did against "Brownie" (Brown just serving as a proxy for attacking The Demon Bush).

In this case, they're keeping the disaster and the suffering as far from their Beloved Precious as possible.

Posted by: Ace at 07:10 AM | Comments (220)
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We are to compromise infinitely, while they are to compromise nothing.

Got it.

Among the reasons I'm despondent about the election is that the media won. They won big. Their outrageous slant to the Democratic/liberal/progressive/leftist side won an election, and they're not paying a price for it. Oh, they'll continue diminishing, as they've been doing for a while, but it's a slow process. There is never a moment when they're truly repudiated.

My usual practice would be to post this sort of story and then say "Media fails to notice progressive left's hypocrisy." I can barely even write those words. So what? It's been said (literally) ten million times, and it doesn't matter. The bad guys win. The bad guys profit.

I renew my call: Boycott NBC. Someone has to pay a price. At some point we must either change the game or simply resign ourselves to losing, given the game's current rules and current players.

Posted by: Ace at 06:39 AM | Comments (298)
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• Politico:Hard Questions Await Obama At News Conference
  
• Obama's Second Term Pledge: Get Out Of DC More Often
  
• Obama Plans To Visit Russia
  
• Obama Calls For 1.6 Trillion Dollar Tax Increase
  
• Fist Fight Breaks Out After Anti-War Afghan Women Disrupt Ceremony Honoring Canada's War Dead
  
• General Petraeus Is In The New Call Of Duty Game. So Is An Aircraft Carrier Named The USS Barack Obama
  
• Lawmaker Asks To Be Paid In Gold
  
• Accuser Recants, The Guy Voicing And Fisting Elmo Is Not A Pedo
  
• The Rise And Fall Of Stalin's Atlantis
  
• Look Who's Refusing To Negotiate On This Fiscal Cliff
  
• Fewer Support Obamacare Repeal
  
• Cuomo Trying To Deflect The Blame
  
• This Immigration Plan Is So Crazy It Just Might Be Crazy
  
• China Pushing Japan Into American Trade Bloc
  
• Are British Boots On The Ground In Syria?
  
• Janeane Garofalo Unwittingly Married For 20 Years
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:55 AM | Comments (369)
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Happy Wednesday.

I'm already sick of hearing that the Generals scandal is a "distraction" cooked up by Democrats or the media to keep people from thinking about Benghazi. As I explained yesterday on Twitter, we shouldn't just ignore security breaches because we wanted Obama to look bad at Benghazi hearings. Daniel Drezner had more on that:

So unlike, say, questions about drone warfare or counterterrorism policy or homeland security or civil liberties, Americans will pay attention to this stuff. Which is interesting, because over the past decade the military has been the one institution to inspire significant amounts of trust in Americans. The less that the public trusts the military, the less that they will trust what the military is doing.

Also, Marc Ambinder has a must-read post over at the Week about what the Generals scandal has revealed about FBI investigations in general.

USA Today has a long, but quality discussion of the fiscal cliff, including the three scenarios for how this will shake out.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:32 AM | Comments (334)
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