Old headline:

Former Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper: I Would Never Have Cast Crucial Vote In Favor of ObamaCare Had I Known Obama Planned a Top-Down, Command-and-Control Scheme To Force All Plans To Follow Birth-Control-For-All Federal Mandates

I don't know how to play this story.

Do I play it as "Democrat betrayed by Obama"?

Or do I play it as "Democrat really, really wants her old seat back and is willing to claim anything to get it"?

A little of both, I guess.

"I would have never voted for the final version of the bill if I expected the Obama Administration to force Catholic hospitals and Catholic Colleges and Universities to pay for contraception,” Dahlkemper said in a press release sent out by Democrats for Life in November. "We worked hard to prevent abortion funding in health care and to include clear conscience protections for those with moral objections to abortion and contraceptive devices that cause abortion. I trust that the President will honor the commitment he made to those of us who supported final passage."

I see no story on the internet stating that Dahlkemper is running again.

But I have a feeling.

Picture swiped from Drudge.

Your Mouth

Sorry about that. I guess it just got away from me at the end, there.

thanks to @slublog

Posted by: Ace at 12:43 PM | Comments (193)
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Sweet Meteor of Death has hired another media adviser, and he's produced this ad. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (104)
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Occupy DC has advised people to remain "as peaceful as possible." Why the caveat there?

But some may have a different definition of "possible."

The [planning] meetings began last Thursday and lasted until Saturday. During these meetings, protesters began throwing around ideas for confusion and chaos that include dressing like Ron Paul supporters since they “generally look like hippies”, pulling fire alarms, screaming ‘fire’ during activities, “glitter-bombing” participants, blocking entrances to the hotel, and cutting electrical power- as first reported by Lachlan Markay at the Heritage Foundation.

The person who obtained all the information said, “Speakers will be physically assaulted, not just verbally confronted.” Two Occupiers, who the informant also identified as members of the New Black Panther Party, “said they would be disappointed if they didn’t get arrested and planned to ‘make it count.’”

“Mitt [Romney] has Secret Service now, but [Newt] Gingrich and [Andrew] Breitbart don’t”, said another planner.

And this is enabled by the leftwing media, which has given them the greenlight -- no matter what these people do, they know that the media will cover for them.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (175)
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Remember when Obama promised he'd stick to the federal limits in campaign donations?

Yeah. And then remember when he realized he could get a lot more money by exceeding those limits and forgoing the federal matching funds?

And then broke his promise?

And like the media didn't even notice he was breaking a promise before he was even in office? In fact, the media portrayed it as a positive thing -- "Hey, look at how much money Obama can raise! When Democrats raise bucketfulls of money, that's a good thing!"

Anyway, Obama had previously promised not to form a PAC.

Guess what they've decided.

The Obama campaign on Tuesday defended its decision to urge fundraisers to back the outside group backing his re-election bid, telling reporters the choice to reverse himself was approved by the president himself.

The campaign late Monday announced that it was not going to unilaterally disarm in the face of a half billion dollars' worth of contributions aimed at defeating President Obama.

"The president did sign off on this," a senior campaign official, who asked to remain unidentified, said on a conference call with reporters.

I Realize I Made Certain Representations About What Would And Would Not Happen In Your Mouth

Mistakes were made. The responsible parties will be disciplined after an exhaustive investigation.

Speaking of, Obama Girl says she's not sure if she's supporting His Awesomeness this time around.

She has her own critiques of the man she once supported.
“I haven’t really decided which way I’m going to go yet,” said Ettinger when asked who she’s going to vote for. “I’m still keeping my eyes and ears open. I certainly don’t dislike Obama. I think he’s done a lot of really great stuff, but he doesn’t get enough credit for the things he does. What he does is just never enough. For me, being Obama Girl, it’s hard because I get people saying, ‘switch to the other side! Make videos for Ron Paul! Why are you with Obama? He sucks!’”

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (133)
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Bob Kerrey is... out? Bob Kerry is out? Bob Kerry is... out?

The slate of Senate elections will heavily favor Republicans in 2012. Democrats will defend 23 seats, while Republicans will defend 10. Six Democratic incumbents have declined to run: Sens. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Nelson, and Jim Webb of Virginia. Republicans, by contrast, have only one vulnerable seat left open, vacated by retiring Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl.

Democrats will face between eight and 11 competitive races to defend seats they currently hold. The most competitive Democratic-held seats represent Hawaii, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Republicans, meanwhile, will face only two to four competitive races to hold onto seats. Competitive GOP-held seats will be contested in Arizona, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Nevada.

Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (130)
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I forgot this absurd thing about cable programming: Cable services pay these channels, which you don't watch, with money they extract from you.

We really, really need a menu service for cable. If a channel isn't interesting enough for a viewer to select, and chose to pay for, he shouldn't have to pay for it.

So Current TV is financed to the tune of a hundred million or so per year from cable companies, which extract the money from you without asking.

When Current's contracts come up for renewal in the next several years, some companies may balk at paying so much for a channel no one watches.

The plan may well be the network’s last chance. The lion’s share of its $115 million in revenues comes from fees that cable carriers pay to host the network—a relatively high rate of 12 cents per subscriber—but its ratings are not high enough to sustain those fees, according to an analysis by the financial-data firm SNL Kagan. With carriage agreements beginning to expire in the next couple of years, the network is likely to see a sharp drop in financing unless its viewership turns around. “They’ve got a very limited window here to get their programming in order,” says Derek Baine, an analyst with SNL Kagan. “The channel has been around for a long time and has gone through many iterations, but despite having quite a lot of subscribers, they’ve never really latched on to a significant viewing audience.”

Because this is the Daily Beast, they must of course offer a reason why so many leftwing media outfits fail.

Also working against the plan is a cold reality about partisan news programming: the right just does it much more successfully than the left. For every Rachel Maddow, the Olbermann protégée who found success on MSNBC, there is an Air America, the left-wing radio network that went belly up in 2010. Liberals in the media argue there’s a very simple explanation for this: that conservatives are just a more unified, lockstep audience, while liberals are more trusting of traditional media and more diffuse in their attentions. “There is an audience on the right that for 30 years has been told the entire mainstream media is out to get them,” says Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of the progressive media-watchdog group Media Matters and author of a forthcoming book about Fox News. No such thing exists on the left. Plus, he says, those who are alienated from the mainstream can find their news at liberal enclaves online, like Daily Kos. “The right wing is so much better organized, they’re machines, they’re robots,” says Uygur. And mainstream media are terrified of them. “It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, if I tell people facts, the Republicans will yell at me,’” he says.

I've got a different theory. How about this one? Liberal media outfits actually don't always fail. See The New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN.

Of course liberals refuse to admit those outfits are themselves liberal, which leaves the scratching their heads at the failures of unnecessary -- superfluous --- liberal media outfits like Air America, which is different from the New York Times not in terms of slant but in terms only of nastiness and lesser production values.

The reason that Fox succeeds is that it's an alternative to the clearly liberal major media organizations.

What is Current an alternative to? To Fox? (That is their new plan, to be the leftwing Fox.)

But CNN and CBS and NBC are already the left-wing Fox.

Your big plan is to ad shouting and name-calling? To be both leftwing and vulgar?

That's why these branded-liberal things fail. The leftwing viewpoint is adopted by all but one of the ten biggest media outfits. The only thing a branded-liberal outfit like Air America ads is vulgarity.

And frankly few people like that. Even I, I Fox fan overall, become very annoyed when I feel Fox is pitching too low and being too overt in its own partisan leanings.

What liberals want is a liberal network that pretends to be high-minded on nonpartisan. Like NPR.

Anyway, Al Gore begged Keith Olbermann to stay because Gore is in the uneviable position of having to rely on Keith Olbermann to 1, behave in a professional manner and 2, deliver ratings.

Current TV is on cable? Keith Olbermann is on Current? Keith Olbermann has to get a big audience on cable?

Farewell and adieu ye fair Spanish ladies,

Farewell and adieu ye fair ladies of Spain...

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (147)
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That's slightly less surprising than the sun rising in the east tomorrow.

Stand by for more.

Quick addition-

The court’s decision upheld a 2010 decision by former Judge R. Vaughn Walker that found marriage to be a fundamental right protected by the Constitution, and that the proposition “fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license

The actual words of the Constitution? The will of California's majority? Thousands of years of human experience? Meh...never heard of them.

For the record, I'm a Tenth Amendment guy on this. If states, like NY, want to enact same-sex marriage, that's up to them. But finding it a "fundamental" federal right? That's simply judicial overreach.

Via Gabe here's the decision (pdf).

Update (again via Gabe) The court apparently didn't find a "fundamental" right to marriage. Instead according to Gabe , "It's much narrower decision than a "fundamental right to marriage" case. It's purely Romer's animus, "rational basis plus" reasoning."

Romer v. Evans is the handiwork of one Justice Anthony.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:16 AM | Comments (246)
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Via DrewM:

Meanwhile, the SMODmentum keeps up, with Erick Erickson endorsing SWOMD at RedSate and even the Hill mentioning it.

And Medically Induced Coma got a plug at Hot Air.

Just in case other people write about this -- clear credit for Sweet Meteor of Death goes to @alexthechick (concept) and @slublog (further concept and photoshop). And then @laurww wrote it up.

And if you missed it, here's George Orwell's vid from earlier:
more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (226)
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He got about 25 miles of range on a full battery charge.

The battery electric drive ran out in the Lincoln Tunnel-- twice. Corrected: I wrote that the car "conked out" in the Lincoln Tunnel. That's wrong. It switched over from electric to gas drive at that point. The point of Bolling noting that was to emphasize the meager electric range of the $46,000 car. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:01 AM | Comments (170)
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Follow 'The Daily DOOM' on Twitter: @AoSHQDOOM.

VDH: There are new monsters in America, and they are us.

But there are new monsters in America, and I am starting to wonder whether I am to be considered among them: those of the uninvolved and uninformed lives, the bar-raisers, the downright mean ones, the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the “way you look”, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on.

My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons?

Posted by: Monty at 04:51 AM | Comments (236)
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