He went from a B+ to an "incomplete"?

From Team Romney...

In December 2009, President Obama Gave Himself A “Good Solid B Plus” For His Work During His First Eleven Months In Office. “US President Barack Obama, in remarks aired late Sunday, awarded himself a B plus for his first 11 months in office, stressing in an interview with talk show queen Oprah Winfrey that there was still much to be done. ‘A good solid B plus,’ Obama said during an hour-long, intimate soft-focus ABC network Christmas at the White House special, when Winfrey asked what grade he would give himself.” (“Obama Gives Himself B+ For First Months In Office,”AFP, 12/14/09)

But today, President Obama refused to give an answer altogether.

· This Morning On “The View,” President Obama Refused To Give Himself A Letter Grade For His Work On The Economy.

HASSELBECK: “Mr. President, I believe it was with Matt Lauer in 2009, you sat down, you were talking about the economy and you said in three years I’ll be held accountable. If I don’t have this done, quote, in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition. Admittedly so in our first segment, you said that Americans are still feeling the hurt of the economy. So how do you grade yourself, honestly, in terms of how you’ve done in terms of economics?

OBAMA: “You know, I won’t give us a letter grade. I think it’s still incomplete.”

Why no grade? Geraghty explains:

… Obama can’t really argue for anything more than a “C” at best, and then the headline would be, “Obama Gives Himself a ‘C’ on the Economy.” If Obama had given any letter grade, really, either an unrealistically good grade or a realistically disappionting grade, he would have provided the Romney campaign with days worth of fodder. The only question was whether the message would be “out of touch, rosy-colored glasses, ignoring the 23 million Americans suffering” or “even Obama admits that his economic policies have failed.”

Yes. The only quote that he could bear would be a B or better, but if he claimed that, the public would realize He Doesn't Know What The Hell He's Talking About.

He needs to say a B or better, but he can't say a B or better. Because he's failing, and he knows it. And, more importantly, the public knows it, and would think he's a lunatic if he claimed to be doing B-level work.

And speaking of tipping points, Rasmussen shows Romney beating Obama on all five top issues this cycle -- economy, taxes, health care, national security, and energy.

This is a phenomenon I noticed, to my dismay, in 2008. When the public moved to support Obama, they began saying they trusted him more on every single issue, even those on which it was silly to say he edged McCain on, like energy and national security.

I chalk this up to a sort of Reverse Buyer's Remorse: When you decide to make a major investment, as in a car, you start selling yourself on the idea that it's just the best at everything. The on the one hand, on the other hand thing is pre-decision; post-decision, I think, many people stop thinking that the non-selected cars have any advantages, and egotistically decide the selection they made is superior in all ways.

Ergo, this could be just another data point indicating that people are now deciding, formally, what they softly, quietly decided two years ago: Obama Doesn't Know What The Hell He's Talking About.

And speaking of people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, but make every judgment not on facts but according to Sacred Law recorded in political Holy Texts: That big, big NYT poll was buried by the NYT, on Page 17.

Not only did they bury it in Page 17 -- they buried the obvious lede in paragraph 15 (out of 19) and didn't report the other big headline at all.

In paragraph 15 out of 19, the Times revealed that Romney was leading by three in the head to head contest, 46%-43%, a gap within the poll's margin of error. The Times's poll partner CBS led with those figures in its own online poll story. The Times also didn't mention the inconvenient fact that after all the talk fired by Democrats and the media of a Republican "war on women," Romney led Obama among women 46%-44%.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (206)
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This seems to be a rebroadcast of the show from earlier. If that doesn't work, try the main link and hit Listen Live.

Cost is plugging is brand-new book, Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (38)
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He said this in 2008.

He's saying it again: "When your name is Barack Obama, it's [an election] is always tight."

So that's the reason he thinks it'll be tight? Because the public is bigoted against his name?

This is a hard case to make, given that he won in 2008, and not just by a little bit, with the same name.

He seems to think it's still 2008.

He wishes it's still 2008.

Dear Barack Hussein Obama

It's not 2008 anymore.

Via BenK./@benk84

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (133)
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Does that headline make no sense to you?

It didn't make sense to me, but now that I've read the article, it does.

You see, Obama's plan was to pivot away quickly from this. Hit it, say the words the high-money gay donors want to hear (or at least words they'll accept, and then drop it.

Trouble is, the media loveloveloves gay marriage. So they won't let it move off the front page.

Favorable media coverage is frustrating President Barack ObamaÂ’s efforts to downplay the public controversy over his May 9 announcement in favor of same-sex marriage.

The importance of his media management efforts was demonstrated by two new polls which show his donation-boosting decision to be a negative at the polls.

A new May 11-13 poll of registered voters by the New York Times and CBS showed that 22 percent of independents were “less likely” to support Obama because of his May 9 announcement that he supports same-sex marriage.

In contrast, only 14 percent of the independents said the decision made them more likely to support him in November, according to the poll.

One thing about this article: I kind of dig it, but there's little to support the central assertion that Obama's "plan" was to "downplay" the issue. The article just sort of asserts it, assumes it, without evidence.

Mickey Kaus meanwhile notes that headlines like this:

Majority say ObamaÂ’s gay marriage stance wonÂ’t change their vote

...are completely jackass and deliberately -- cocoonishly -- hiding the actual story from the audience.

But 39% said it would–and they split two-to-one against Obama and gay marriage....

Worse, among independents, 23% said it would make them less likely to vote for Obama while only 11% said it made them more likely–a negative for a net of 12% of this group. Obviously, “less likely” doesn’t mean it’s going to be the deciding factor for that 12%–there are bigger issues, and gay marriage seems likely to fade in salience. But even if it’s the deciding factor for a tenth of that 12%, it’s a blow to Obama’s chances. The headline should have read something like:

Poll: ObamaÂ’s gay marriage stance hurts him with key voters

...but that's not the Narrative the media wishes -- the narrative they wish is "President Awesome Does Awesome, Awesome Thing; Public Rewards Him Awesomely for His Awesomeness."

"President does something the media likes and the public doesn't and the public punishes him" is a downer they don't want to note.

Kaus notes his colleague/friend Robert Wright making all sorts of cocoonishly hacktacular assumptions -- like that those independents who say they'll be less likely to vote for Obama are really lying, and are "closet Obama-haters" who would have voted against Obama anyway.

All of them?

I suppose that's possible, but if you're just going to assume false answers to polling questions, why bother discussing polls at all? Whenever objective data gives you a read you don't like, you reject the data; so your analysis is not in any real sense dependent on, or sensitive to, the data. You Know What You Know and You Know It. Why pretend otherwise?

In fairness, there's a bit of this in everyone. But while I might say that there are some voters who are claiming a greater affection for the president than they actually feel (you're not racist if you vote against the president but pretend you really think "he's such a great guy" even as you vote against him), certainly I wouldn't say this is a big factor. 3-4%, maybe.

I'm not claiming that everyone saying something I don't like is lying.

Speaking of denialism, the NYT poll found that by 3 to 1, the public thinks Obama's same sex decision isn't a Gutsy Call at all, but rather Craven Political Maneuvering, as Drew mentioned earlier.

Obama's people are now calling the New York Times and CBS biased wingnut liars who lie wingnutty lies.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (127)
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At Project Veritas.

There's a digest of it at the Daily Caller.

The video has three parts: The first part shows people who identify as non-citizens on Jury Pool forms, but in fact vote in elections -- illegal if their first claim is true.

Also in this part, O'Keefe investigators pose as obviously foreign-born people -- repeatedly saying they'll go get their foreign passports -- but election officials insist they don't care, they just want them to sign with an "X" and they can have their ballots.

The middle section is about an election judge in North Carolina who says he'll either ignore North Carolina's new voting law or modify his oath to say "I mostly support the Constitution" as a CYA for ignoring it.

The last section, at 7:30, has an actor posing as someone who has voted, along with 30 other students, in multiple states as part of an "Operation Chaos" against Romney. Some kind of LGBT professor giggles at the plan, and is helpful towards the announced law-breaker.

And in a subsequent interview with a conservative journalist, this very same professor insists there is no such thing as voter fraud.

Posted by: Ace at 09:21 AM | Comments (77)
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When Christians read the Bible, they read important persons as prefigurations of Christ. Daniel's time in the lion's den is a prefiguration of Christ's crucifixion. And so on.

Well, you'll be happy to know that all past presidents were prefigurations of our current High Priest of the God-State. All history leads, through a process of evolution, into the perfection of Barack Hussein Obama, the Final Completion of America (TM).

As commenters keep hilariously saying, THE BALLS ON THIS GUY!

Many of President Obama’s fervent devotees are young enough not to have much memory of the political world before the arrival of The One. Coincidentally, Obama himself feels the same way—and the White House’s official website reflects that.

The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on www.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t—it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford). Here are a few examples:

On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.

In a 1946 letter to the National Urban League, President Truman wrote that the government has “an obligation to see that the civil rights of every citizen are fully and equally protected.” He ended racial segregation in civil service and the armed forces in 1948. Today the Obama administration continues to strive toward upholding the civil rights of its citizens, repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, allowing people of all sexual orientations to serve openly in our armed forces.

...

In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

BigGovernment lists a few other Prefigurations of The Obama.

Obama chooses not to highlight the fact that he is killing a lot of terrorists with the weapons and intelligence apparatus inherited from Bush. No, for Bush, his only similarity is...

“In 2002, President George W. Bush’s State of the Union was the first to be live broadcast on the Internet. In 2011 and 2012, President Obama’s State of the Union speeches were available in an enhanced live stream version that featured infographics, charts and data side-by-side in real time with the President’s speech.”

He also might have mentioned hat Bush paved the way for his enormous deficits and socialistic bailouts.

But I guess Bush is too important as a Devil Figure to suggest such a continuity.

Posted by: Ace at 08:32 AM | Comments (289)
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I can't see Russia's capital from my house!

Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Comments (94)
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Pardon me if this is already old.

A new book by Edward Klein called The Amateur alleges that a friend/supporter of Obama tried to pay Reverend Wright $150,000 to just go away and be quiet.

Now, the saving fact here for Obama is that this came from a friend so Obama can pretend this wasn't done at his behest.

The trouble is, immediately after Wright refused the bribe, Obama then met with him and tried to sugar-talk him into doing the same thing.

“After the media went ballistic on me, I received an e-mail offering me money not to preach at all until the November presidential election,” Wright told Klein, according to the New York Post, which obtained the excerpts.

ThatÂ’s when Obama himself got involved, Wright said, and made a personal plea to keep Wright out of the spotlight.

“Barack said he wanted to meet me in secret, in a secure place. And I said, ‘You’re used to coming to my home, you’ve been here countless times, so what’s wrong with coming to my home?’ So we met in the living room of the parsonage of Trinity United Church of Christ, at South Pleasant Avenue right off 95th Street, just Barack and me. I don’t know if he had a wire on him. His security was outside somewhere.”

Wright added that Obama seemed more concern about his political circumstances than WrightÂ’s personal well-being.

“And one of the first things Barack said was, ‘I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.’ He knew I had some speaking engagements lined up, and he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.’ … I said, ‘I don’t see it that way. And anyway, how am I supposed to support my family?’ And he said, ‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t speak in public. The press is gonna eat you alive.’”

Klein then revealed the name of the guy who offered Wright $150,000.

“Well, what happened is that after ABC’s Brian Ross broadcast the video tapes of the Rev. Wright ‘God damning America’ and slamming whites and slamming Jews and America, he was contacted by one of Obama’s closest personal friends — a guy who travels on Obama’s plane, who plays basketball with him, who goes on vacation with him,” Klein said. “His name is Dr. Eric Whitaker. Dr. Whitaker is the vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center and he’s a member of Obama’s very tight inner circle. And he sent an email to a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ.”

Does that hospital sound familiar? Oh, it sure does.

Klein reminded listeners that WhitakerÂ’s hospital is the same one that paid first lady Michelle Obama $316,962 a year to handle community affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center while her husband served in the U.S. Senate.

As a commenter here is always doggedly pointing out, the hospital did not fill that job after Michelle Obama left it -- leaving one scratching one's head imagining what sort of job is so critical that you have to pay someone such a large salary to perform, and yet is simultaneously so unnecessary you can terminate the position entirely when the apple of your eye packs up for DC.

And of course there's still more, and I don't even mean the allegation that Obama appreciated that Wright helped him "convert" to Christianity without having to repudiate his "Islamic background."

I mean this good friend Whitaker is being nicely treated by the taxpaying public.

That’s the same guy who... got a “glowing” reference from Obama for Tony Rezko, which led to Rod Blagojevich hiring Whitaker to be the state’s public health director; and the same guy whose UHI program just got nearly $6 million from HHS as one of 26 grantees in an applicant pool of 3,000.

The six dollar million man? Indeed he is.

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President ObamaÂ’s closest friends.

The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since ObamaÂ’s days in law school and who also vacations with the first family.

Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett also has ties to the UHI.

I'm wondering why this isn't the Number One story in America.

But the answer is obvious. This story kills Obama -- ends the election now, over, done -- so it cannot be a story.

That's why it's up to us.

The media will not report this so there isn't any point whining about it.

It's up to us to report it, to publish it far and wide, to make sure every citizen in this country is aware of this bribe and the Chicago Way.

Posted by: Ace at 07:25 AM | Comments (198)
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Our resident poll addict, CAC, covered this last night but I think it deserves some prime time attention.

Romney leads overall 46% to 43% among registered voters but the real treat is the breakdown among women.

Romney leads among women by two points [46%-44%]. This is a dramatic turnaround from even a few weeks ago, when the Left was singing the dopey "war on women" refrain from every rooftop. I guess it didn't really stick. Think Progress' Judd Legum tweeted that if Romney wins women in the fall, his margin of victory overall will be impressive. Indeed. Score one for stay-at-home moms, at least for the moment.

Poor little Julia hit hardest.

Now, this is May, this poll could very well be an outlier, maybe they over-sampled married women where Romney has led before (or conversely maybe other polls have over-sampled single women who give Obama his traditional advantage with women) and a million other things. Did I mention it's May?

I can't find the link but someone on Twitter was watching Chuck Todd's daily Obama ad show on MSNBC and said Obama spokestool Stephanie Cutter was on attacking the methodology of this poll. Yes, those darn rightwing nut jobs at CBS/New York Times. Funny but I don't recall her slamming polls that showed Obama up thanks to ridiculously over-sampling Democrats.

They need the narrative to be "Romney hates women and they hate him back". It was never true but if polling starts showing it, they know they are in big, big trouble.

Added: Here's the Cutter/Todd conversation on the "bias" in this poll.

Chuck Todd: “This is such a resounding number, it’s within any margin of error you want to create… That’s a lot of people saying he did this for politics.”

Cutter: “We can’t put the methodology of that poll aside, because the methodology was significantly biased–”

Todd: “You think this is so flawed, that this number–”

Cutter: “This is a biased sample.”

Todd: “This three to one margin is somehow going to shrink down the other way?”

Cutter: “I don’t want to go through methodology on your show. I think your readers – I think your viewers would be pretty bored by it.”

Todd: “They’re junkies. They like this sample.”

Cutter: “They sampled a biased sample, so they re-biased the same sample. I think that the results of that poll are probably pretty flawed.”

Problem for Team Stupid: The partisan breakdown is the same as last month's CBS/NYT poll which showed an Obama lead.

So this is more along the lines of "a chew toy to enjoy and keep an eye on" then a sign it's in the bag but still...enjoy.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:30 AM | Comments (174)
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Happy Tuesday.

A fine piece of PhotoShoppin' by our gal across the pond appears below the fold. more...

Posted by: andy at 02:47 AM | Comments (319)
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