At the moment, it seems to me that Anonymous (the criminal "hacktivist") group is alleging more than its hacking has uncovered.

What the emails seem to prove is that White Supremacists support Ron Paul; but what they don't yet seem to prove is whether Ron Paul supports White Supremacists.

Ron Paul always does this jive about "just because they support me doesn't mean I support them."

Now, honestly, I already believe the main thesis here (that Ron Paul deliberately courts the Neo Nazi fringe), but I'm evaluating the quality of the new evidence offered.

The most damning thing, I think, concerns a meeting between Jamie Kelso and Ron (and Rand) Paul.

In the excerpt, "A3P" refers to the American Third Position Party, which, according to Wikipedia, at least, sells itself as neither left nor right, but "tends to promote White nationalism."

Other excerpts show A3P webmaster Jamie Kelso (whose email account was one hacked by the collective) coordinating meeting between Paul and other members of A3P such as corporate lawyer and chairman of the neo-Nazi group Paul. “I’m going to go to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with Bill Johnson,” reads an email to an A3P member dated January 2011. “Bill and I will be meeting with Ron and Ran Paul. I have a teleconference call with Bill (and Ron Paul) tonight. Much more later. Things are starting to happen (thanks to folks like you).”

In another passage, Kelso, a former Scientologist and account owner of other German Nazi forums, wrote: “I’ll be at CPAC from Feb. 9 to Feb. 12. I’ll send back reports to you from personal meetings with Ron Paul, newly-elected Senator Rand Paul and many others. It’ll be here on WhiteNewsNow, a place that is really starting to get interesting because of the presence of folks like you. Birds of a feather flock together, and we are really gathering some quality here.”

Did the meetings happen?

Not sure of that yet.

Jamie Kelso does appear to be a white supremacist. (I say "appears to be" because, apart from one Twitter-guy sending me stuff about him, I have literally no idea who he is.)

I know you're not supposed to cite Wikipedia but...

Jamie Kelso (June 8, 194 is Administrator and owner of the American White Nationalist websites WhiteNewsNow.com and TheWhiteRace.com . He hosts daily webradio programs, including The Jamie Kelso Show on the Voice of Reason Broadcast Network ReasonRadioNetwork.com.

Assuming that's true, and assuming Kelso wasn't himself blowing smoke about a "meeting" (for example, Grover Norquist has a meeting every week where the doors are more or less open; if it's that kind of a thing, it's not so damning), then this is pretty bad for Paul.

I haven't read the emails yet. I'm not even sure they're real (do I trust Anonymous? No).

But... I have believed this for a quite a while, anyway. I'm guessing (but just guessing) that we are going to connect some dots here.

Posted by: Ace at 01:59 PM | Comments (160)
Post contains 528 words, total size 3 kb.

Not just noting this because it's my friend Ladd -- even the nonpartisan "Best Week Ever" site called it "more exciting than at least two of the Pirates Of The Caribbean films."

There are two strategies Ladd has in mind, one business, the other political.

The business strategy is that it can be easily tailored to other Congressional candidates, so he can sell it to multiple campaigns. And in fact other campaigns are signing on. A lot of people do that, of course, selling a basic ad that can be used in lots of races.

And that makes it cheap for candidates to buy.

The political strategy is that -- besides being viral and fun -- if a lot of Congressional candidates run the ad, a lot of people will see it. And the point is not just to win individual congressional races, but to drive down Obama's numbers.

And that's not new either, except the plan is to do it in Blue Districts, too.
Where the usual campaign math would be "Don't attack Obama, he's too popular, it will hurt your own campaign to hit him." Even there, the idea is to poke at him as a figure of fun.

Once he can be seen as the hopeless, hapless bumbler he is, who knows. Maybe people will smarten up and realize he's done nothing but damage to the country.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Comments (167)
Post contains 395 words, total size 3 kb.

I've grown less confident in my own spin on it.

To many conservatives, this is simply the wrong answer for a Republican to give. ItÂ’s Democrats who rely on a social safety net, they argue. Republicans who believe in pro-growth conservative policies like to say their ideas will help everyone and donÂ’t divide based on class, much less rely on government programs.

“This is bad,” conservative columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer said Wednesday night on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report.” “The real problem here is that he doesn’t have a fluency with conservative ideas. … The moral case for conservative economics is that our policies are going to help everybody, including the poor.”

This has actually been bothering me, though on a different issue.

Romney could do a great deal to win conservatives over to his side by giving a speech about Fast and Furious. There is no "extremism" in this. Three hundred people were murdered and our Department of Justice won't even say why.

One doesn't have to push the most pointed theory -- the Deliberate Murder theory -- to note that our own government should not be arming up the Mexican drug cartels.

I mean, is there a counter-argument I'm not aware of?

And yet Romney doesn't make easy lay-up gimme moves like this.

Which makes me think he doesn't even know much about Fast and Furious.

Why not?

If Romney's case for himself is competency -- is this not directly relevant for the case for the incompetency of the Obama Administration?

"Competency" seems to be Romney's comfort zone. It's not all icky-partisan.

Is he now ruling out competency arguments just because many on the right are making them, too? Is the well here poisoned simply because his fellow (allegedly) Republicans are drinking from it too?

Are we that vile, in his sight? That he cannot even go where we are, for the moment we're there ourselves, it becomes a club he wouldn't want to be a member of?

What the hell does he read? Who does he read? I assume the Wall Street Journal would be on his list; has he not read anything about it there, either?

Where is his head at -- literally? Where does his brain get its information from?

Is he so arrogant to imagine that he has nothing to learn from anyone else?

Does he despise conservatives so much that our very presence on a side of a topic sends him running for cover?

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (495)
Post contains 442 words, total size 3 kb.

Issa just began with a speech, noting the point of government oversight is to make sure citizens know what they're getting out of government.

Posted by: Ace at 11:04 AM | Comments (87)
Post contains 34 words, total size 1 kb.

Via Hot Air, an interesting take on Obama's intellect and work habits from Mickey Kaus.

The check-box version: He isn't impressed.

Definitely read the whole thing (it's quite short) but it paints a picture of a very passive presider, given brief broad-stroke plans and reports by his underlings, who generally accepts them without asking many questions.

His aides seem to give a series of possibilities with boxes next to them. Obama picks from these possibilities by drawing a check in the box.

He’s offered a box to extend a one year non-defense spending freeze into a three year freeze. He doesn’t ask for a bigger, smaller, longer or broader freeze. He draws “a check mark.” … Finally, he’s presented with a classic three-box-con memo–two extreme boxes (big new jobs package, big new deficit package) and a safer middle box (“smaller, more symbolic” deficit efforts), a matrix clearly designed to get him to choose the middle option. He chooses the middle option.

You know the Strawman Extremes Gambit Obama always cons the public with? "Some say we should murder all people making more than $250,000 per year, some say we should hand over to them the entire American GDP; I choose a middle path." That one?

Yeah. Obama's aides are running the same con on him and he's too dopey to see through it.

IÂ’m sure Obama is smarter than this. He canÂ’t be an executive who spends his days checking boxes, accepting the choices presented by his aides, never reaching outside them through unconventional channels or reaching unconventional thinkers, never throwing over the framework with which he is presented.

IÂ’m sure of it, but I canÂ’t find much evidence for it in LizzaÂ’s piece. The aides who leaked him the memos didnÂ’t do Obama any favors.

Why are you sure he's smarter than this?

We mostly say people are smart if other people say they're smart. That's how it tends to work.

However, with most people who are actually smart, if you try to dig up the evidence for their intelligence -- if you go past the assertions of the crowd these people are smart -- you will find objective evidence of that that you can evaluate for yourself.

People say author J.G. Ballard is smart. I've never read his books, but I take people's word for it. But if I ever decided I wanted to judge for myself if Ballard's bright, I could rouse myself to read his books.

That objective evidence of intelligence exists for most people acclaimed as smart.

Where is such evidence for Obama?

Where is evidence for Obama's intelligence, apart from the assertion of the crowd, which chiefly just repeats what others in the crowd are saying?

And don't say that dumb autobiography. He wrote that like most politicians write their memoirs -- in broadest strokes only, with a pro (Bill Ayers in this case) adding the writerly flourishes.

The Intellectual Incandescence of a Thousand Greek Philosophers and Benedictine Monks

Check.

The Simpsons Did It: President McBain.

Thanks to Dan-O.

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (152)
Post contains 513 words, total size 3 kb.

Points deducted for not letting the bit continue the whole way through. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (45)
Post contains 20 words, total size 1 kb.

People knock the electoral process.

They say it's ugly. They say it reduces people to their basest, most selfish behavior.

Well let me tell you that sometimes it results in wonderful things, too.

Sometimes, for example, a difficult campaign actually causes a man to find religion, to convert to Christianity, and not a quiet, humble form of Christianity, but a Testify From The Rooftops form of it.

Isn't that a good thing?

"And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies arenÂ’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders arenÂ’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in GodÂ’s command to 'love thy neighbor as thyself.'"

"I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato," Obama added.

The president said he often falls to his knees in prayer, and emphasized the role of his religious values in determining where to lead the country.

"I’d be remiss if I stopped there; if my values were limited to personal moments of prayer or private conversations with pastors or friends. So instead, I must try — imperfectly, but I must try — to make sure those values motivate me as one leader of this great nation."

Obama maintained that his call for the wealthiest to give up their tax breaks, he's doing so out of economic necessity, but also in line with biblical teachings.
"And I think to myself, if IÂ’m willing to give something up as somebody whoÂ’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think thatÂ’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with JesusÂ’s teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,'" Obama said, noting Jewish and Islamic teachings say much the same thing.

In related news, you know who just won a dinner with Michele and Barack Obama? Jesus did, that's who.

The Absolute Separation of Church and State and Elimination of Religious Impulse from Government Policy

The Constitution demands no less.

Three out of every four years.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (221)
Post contains 463 words, total size 3 kb.

Attorney General Eric "You're A Coward" Holder is getting drilled by the GOP.

At the start of a hearing, chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will do what is necessary to force the Justice Department to produce the information.

The attorney general said he will consider Issa's demand.

"I think you're hiding behind something here," Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., told Holder. "You ought to give us the documents. ... It appears we're being stonewalled."

Burton, a former chairman of the committee, said he would urge Issa to seek a contempt of Congress citation if the Justice Department does not produce the congressionally subpoenaed documents.

Meanwhile, Holder doesn't get why everyone is so upset. In fact, he should be getting some credit here.

"I should be held accountable for, certainly, my role -- whatever I did or didn't do in connection to the supervision of Operation Fast and Furious," Holder said during the hearing today. "But, yeah, I'm Attorney General of the United States and I should be held accountable, perhaps even given some credit -- imagine that, given some credit -- for the things that this Department has done under my leadership." Holder cited his role in "revitalizing" the civil rights division as an example of his good leadership, among other things.

His comments came in a tense response to a question from one of the House investigators. "How many more border patrol agents would have had to die as a result of Fast and Furious for you to take responsibility [and resign]?" Rep. Ana Marie Buerkle asked Holder.

Holder also wants a new law to prevent what his department did. I guess actually just not doing it any more never crossed his mind. (Added: Gunwalking like this already IS illegal. You'd think the Attorney General would know that kind of thing.)

CSPAN is streaming the hearing here. Not sure if it's still going on or not though.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:58 AM | Comments (265)
Post contains 331 words, total size 3 kb.

Rumor has it all this talk about a third party run is true. And you don't even have to go swimming. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 08:34 AM | Comments (114)
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

This is awesome. Not because the politics of it matter much (though as a Newt guy, I'm happy he didn't get Trumps blessing) but because it is funny as hell. Humor is something this primary has been lacking to say the least.

Trump was going to endorse Newt. This gave Romney propaganda chief Jen Rubin a chance to mock both Trump and Newt in a post entitled, "Egomaniacs R Us: Trump to pick Newt".

Referring to this December report on the least desirable endorsements (“According to a Marist poll, 79 percent of New Hampshire voters say getting Trump’s support would make them less likely or no more likely to vote for him or her”), Jesse Benton, spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), e-mails me, “Poor Newt. Based on the polling I’ve seen, he stands to lose 5 points from this circus act.” As for Trump, Benton cracks, “I didn’t think it was possible for Trump to lower his credibility, but somehow, he just did.”

There is a weird commonality among Cain, Trump and Gingrich — an unseemly pattern of behavior with women. Perhaps that’s simply one manifestation of their egomania. And all of these pro-Newt characters share a penchant for extreme, nasty rhetoric with a disdain for productive governance. This is all about THEM and their PR machines.

Oops.

The walk-back on that should be spectacular! Look for it to include phrases like "Trump was surprisingly statesmanlike", "the two business tycoons remind us of the best of America" and "Mitt is sooooo adorable!"

Keep in mind, I have an excellent track record of predicting Rubin's hackery. Take this stuff to the bank or the prop-bets window.

I don't care who you are supporting, Mitt and Trump the day after Mitt says "I don't really concerned about the very poor"? Thank you Jebus! I need a laugh like this.

You just know at some point there will be an awkward joke from either Trump or Mitt about how compared to The Donald, Romney is practically middle-class. It's going to be great.

And finally...Mitt's going to be there with Trump. I can't wait to see how he handles the "so are you a birther like Mr. Trump?" question.

EXCLUSIVE...MUST CREDIT ACE OF SPADES HQ: Leaked text of Trump's Romney endorsement:

Newt: I love you but you've really got to learn to shut up your ex-wives. You never hear from Ivana or Marla Maples anymore, do you? This is an inexcusable management failure by you. If you can't keep wife number 2 quiet, how can you keep Putin in check?

Ron Paul: You're just nuts.

Sweater Vest Guy: I don't even know who you are or what you're doing here.

You're all fired.

Mitt: You show a lot of promise. You haven't been all the successful in the business world...$200 million? Come on, I've made that while I'm standing here with you 4 but I'm going to take a chance on you...you're hired.

Update: Rubin is sad that Mitt is accepting this endorsement, though it's quite muted compared to the earlier post. I still say let's wait until after the event and see what she says.

Maybe she won't flip on this. After all her hard work Team Mitt is probably willing to let her go off message once. Just once. Heck, it might even help sell the pretense she's objective.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:10 AM | Comments (261)
Post contains 584 words, total size 4 kb.