Yes, that was the original headline, reporting that Norm Dicks had now joined his liberal Democratic congressmates in supporting gay marriage.

If you don't believe me, google "with dicks in, all".

Alas the headline has now been changed.

Thanks to a commenter whose name I forgot to note! UncleDave.

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (144)
Post contains 83 words, total size 1 kb.

Yes, that was the original headline, reporting that Norm Dicks had now joined his liberal Democratic congressmates in supporting gay marriage.

If you don't believe me, google "with dicks in, all".

Alas the headline has now been changed.

Thanks to a commenter whose name I forgot to note!

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (70)
Post contains 82 words, total size 1 kb.

Maybe she wanted to make Indian friends at the University of Pennsylvania, too.

But then I still wonder-- why did she never attend a single American Indian event at Harvard?

The University of Pennsylvania, where Warren taught at the law school from 1987 through 1995, listed her as a minority in a “Minority Equity Report” posted on its website. The report, published in 2005, well after her departure, included her as the winner of a faculty award in 1994. Her name was highlighted in bold, the designation used for minorities in the report.

A spokesman for the law school did not immediately return a phone message today.

The reference offers another piece of evidence that Warren was identified as a Native American as part of her professional career. Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard University, her current employer, had described her as a Native American when it was under fire for a lack of diversity on its law school faculty.

Where do these law schools keep getting the idea from that Elizabeth Warren was an Indian, if she isn't claiming to be one?

Oh, right.

They saw those high cheekbones and put it together themselves.

Flaming Fauxcahontas Skull courtesy of @megaindependent.

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (210)
Post contains 219 words, total size 2 kb.

Long troubled?

How long? Seven months?

Another good piece by Nolte on Obama's media palace guard.

Media bias isnÂ’t just about what is and isnÂ’t covered. It's also about how something is covered and rolled out. For instance, the failing and corrupt Washington Post has twice now attempted to use decades-old incidents to create ongoing media narratives meant to negatively define serious challengers to their precious Obama. The way in which this is done is to use huge splashes that are rolled out in a way that ensures plenty of attention and coverage (probably through coordination) from their fellow members of the corrupt media.

...

Using the exact same m.o., this morning the Washington Post dropped what had to be an intentionally-timed bomb on presumptive nominee Mitt Romney. Within hours of Obama suddenly deciding to stop lying about his position on same-sex marriage, the Washington Post read Mitt Romney's teenage mind, found it anti-gay, and in a huge, attention-getting feature worked hand-in-hand with the Obama campaign to paint their likely challenger as a snooty, wealthy,
homophobic, prep school bully.

Compare today's story about Mitt Romney to a 2008 story the Washington Post published about then-candidate Obama's formative years.

Just for starters, look at the difference in the headlines. Mitt Romney's immediately tagged as the prep schooler with troubling incidents in his past. By contrast, Obama is headlined as a thoughtful Seeker. The Romney article opens immediately with the tale of Romney's homophobic bullying. This is in stark contrast to the opening of the '08 Obama piece which paints a picture of Obama's hard-scrabble life growing up in Hawaii.

Hilariously, you have to read -- no joke -- over 8,800 word before the words "drug use," "marijuana," or "cocaine" are mentioned in reference to Obama.
This is how the Washington Post tries to get away with claiming it covered Obama's sordid past but also how it gets away with covering Obama's sordid past without defining Their Candidate in a way that might hurt his chances of winning an election.

Thanks to @rdbrewer4 for both.

Media Soft-Pedaled Obama's Cocaine Use: More on this from Commentary.

It was presented by the Washington Post, for example, as something "everyone did" in Hawaii -- after all, one of of Obama's old friends reports, the drinking age was 18.

How that justifies away coke use is lost on me, but that was the Washington Post's effort there.

When it comes to Romney, of course, they paint a hair-cutting incident as leading to a gay man's Suicide By Natural Causes 48 years later.

And multiple people are, of course, "terrified" by Romney's pranks.

Posted by: Ace at 12:40 PM | Comments (160)
Post contains 494 words, total size 3 kb.

What have you found most enchanting?

"Whatever people think about this issue, we know it's controversial, there's no denying when a president speaks out for the first time like that, it is history," co-host of ABC's "Good Morning America" George Stephanopoulos said to Robin Roberts.

And let me tell you, George, I'm getting chills again," "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts said about her interview with Obama.

"When you sit in that room and you hear him say those historic words. It was not lost on anyone in there right there. You never know what he's going to say until you ask him," she added.

The media is so unbiased and professional about withholding their personal opinions from their reportage that I have literally no idea whatsoever whether the media favors this announcement or opposes it.

On Political Deliverables Vs. Objective Goods: I've previously noted that all of Obama's "successes" are in the former area, save one.

There is big difference between political deliverables and general deliverables.

By the former, I mean easily-achieved partisan actions. Like imposing the Mexico City restrictions, or lifting them. Partisans and people concerned with that particular issue are pleased (and displeased) by such actions.

But they're easy, aren't they?

Obama's health care victory was a partisan legislative victory along these lines.

By a general deliverable, I mean something that almost everyone would perceive as a boon no matter what their politics. Successfully prosecuting a war with a low number of casualties. Presiding over a hot economy. Plugging the hole.

Obama ran not as a partisan, but as a centrist whose chief recommendation was his competency. In other words, he ran as someone less interested in political deliverables and more interested in (and more capable of) general deliverables, such as a strong economy, a successful (and less painful) resolution of the Wars we're fighting, and a general ability to move the bureaucracy in an intelligent, purposeful way, such as to... you know, plug the hole. Things of this nature.

The tough stuff, in other words. Not to demean ideology, but the stuff that most people care strongly about.

He has not delivered a single general deliverable. Quite the opposite, in fact -- he seems incapable of delivering anything at all, anything that almost all people would call an objective, nonpartisan boon.

He's a reverse Midas. Everything he touches turns base and devalued.

The only thing he can deliver -- indeed, the only thing he seems remotely interested in -- is the sort of cheap partisan stunting that he avowed to be beneath him.

People are noticing.

It is my belief that ideologies flourish not based upon argument or rhetoric, but when a party comes to power and then delivers the general deliverables. When a president or party is able to deliver objective goods, his ideology advances, not because people have become convinced by reason or rhetoric, but simply because they decide If they've got everything working smoothly, I guess that means they're probably right about these ideological points they keep talking about, too.

And I believe the contrary: Liberalism will suffer greatly due to Obama's Miserable Failure, the same as it did under Jimmy Carter.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (140)
Post contains 571 words, total size 4 kb.

But you know: Mitt Romney was responsible for a 46-year-gestating Suicide By Natural Causes, so.

This was from last week's Washington Post, apparently, but I didn't hear of it being reported there. (But then, maybe that Pethokoukis piece I linked yesterday actually referenced it by link.)

By Brad Plumer, The Washington Post
Posted May 05, 2012, at 5:39 a.m.

If the same percentage of adults were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent. If the percentage was where it was when George W. Bush took office, the unemployment rate would be 13.1 percent.

That helps explain a seeming contradiction in the unemployment numbers — the rate keeps dropping even though job creation has been soft.

The explanation is a little-watched measure known as the “labor force participation rate.” That tracks the number of working-age Americans who are holding a job or looking for one. Between March and April, it dropped by 342,000. But because the official unemployment rate counts only those workers who are actively seeking work, that actually made the unemployment rate go down.

Critics of the Obama administration have been quick to seize on this as the real reason for the falling unemployment rate...

Economists say the story is considerably more complicated....

And there's your spin. Yes, the labor force is shrinking, and has been for a while, but not this rapidly. Watch it drop precipitously under Obama:

That year 2000 peak was also a short-term one, which occurred during Clinton's boom years. So to say it's been "declining" since then is misleading. Yes, we're down from the Boom Year peak, of course. A return to normalcy.

But the real serious fall occurs under Obama's watch.

And further-- if Baby Boomers are retiring early (which the Post says is one of the other reasons, apart from economic malaise, the labor force participation rate is declining), that should open up positions for younger workers.

But it's not. Even with so many fewer workers seeking jobs, the official unemployment rate is still higher than 8%. And the true unemployment rate is anywhere from 11% to 17%, depending on how you count it.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (231)
Post contains 390 words, total size 3 kb.

I can't say this is super-funny. It's kind of funny.

But it is super true.

Enjoy "Tim Burton" as he brainstorms the major elements of his next movie, which are exactly like the major elements of every single previous movie.

Thanks to steve_in_hb.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (66)
Post contains 49 words, total size 1 kb.

24 hours ago Barack Obama's dishonest position on gay marriage was, to the left, not optimal but understandable.

Now, just a day later, it's the worst thing ever and "backwards on equality."

So this guy lied for at least eight years about his position on gay marriage (reversing his 1996 pro- stance as he ran for Senate in 2004), for political purposes, but Mitt Romney can't take that same position now?

Who knows, maybe Mitt's lying too. If so, Mitt has like three or four more good years of lying in his account.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (112)
Post contains 187 words, total size 2 kb.

49% Democrat = 50% voting for Obama.

37% Republican = 42% voting for Romney.

Whatevs, dudes.

Why not poll 58% Democrats and start padding that lead?

Meanwhile, for the third day running, Gallup's poll of registered voters (not even likely voters) has Romney up over Obama 47-44. The seven day sample has taken almost all of the swinginess out of the poll. Before the 47-44, I think it was 46-45 Romney for a couple of days.

Very close, but two things: It's registered voters, which gooses the Democrat numbers by 3-4%, and Romney is just beginning his general election campaign-- Obama's been doing his for a year (or more, depending on how you count).

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (78)
Post contains 136 words, total size 1 kb.

That's how I read the Washington Post's article about Romney.

The article attempts a Life of Two Men structure, documenting Romney's rise and his victim's fall. Most egregiously, it contrasts the very-much-later-in-life award of a Distinguished Alumni honor for Romney with this guy's death, both in 2005, as if these things are related.

Along the way it also notes there was some "veiled racism" at the school -- a football coach gave the nickname "Kamikazee" to a Japanese player --which doesn't have anything to do with Romney.

Oh, right, it was the "culture that shaped him." Also known as "America in 1959." I guess Obama wouldn't have had that insidious influence as a youngster, being off in Indonesia and such.

Anyway, here's the Vicious Prank that led to this man's Downward Spiral and eventually his Slow-Motion Death By Hazing in 2005.

Yes, he died in 2005. But by the way this article is written, it seriously attempts to suggest, between the lines, that his death by natural causes (at age 58 or thereabouts) was somehow all traceable back to Mitt Romney and the One Vicious Prank they could dig up.

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the schoolÂ’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut LauberÂ’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

...

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.

The Washington Post continues on like this, documenting Romney's pranks, attempting to make them seem sinister. Like, when he poses as cop and rousts some fellow students for having bottles of alcohol in their car, they talk about the "terror" of the incident, because, you know, the students could be expelled for having alcohol, and that terror hangs over them.

Until they find out it's a gag, of course. But the Washington Post underscores that "terror."

One thing they only mention later: Romney was a senior at an all-boys school, and high in the unofficial leadership of it.

Now, what happens when boys are in that situation is that they engage in hazing and power-plays. In British schools, older boys will often rape younger boys. It usually has bad consequences to put boys in charge of other boys. Look at any fraternity during Hell Week.

However, this seems to have been the only mean thing Romney did in his high school career.

Did I mention this was high school?

Anyway, back to how this One Prank destroyed this man's life forever and led to his Suicide By Natural Causes 46 years later.

After lights out, John Lauber often left his door open....

“He was very quiet, not a jock,” said Steph Lady. “Very soft-spoken. I know nothing, probably gay, but who knows. We were so stupid and naïve. I know there was homosexuality there but we didn’t even have a word for it. And there was homophobia then, too.”

Victim. Oppressor. Writes itself, doesn't it?

On an overcast Saturday, David Craig, a senior prefect and day student, drove his car down Martell Drive along the school grounds and saw a figure duck into the hedges. He thought the person might be trespassing and stopped, only to find Lauber puffing on a cigarette. In a move that he said he later regretted as an excess of the “dorm trooper” mentality instilled by Cranbrook, Craig reported Lauber to the headmaster. Soon after, Lauber was expelled.

“He just disappeared,” Lady said.

Sudden disappearances at Cranbrook were not unheard of. Students might pass a dorm neighbor on the way to class and come back hours later, with all their belongings gone and their beds stripped by maintenance staff. Bad behavior and bad grades were not tolerated.

Yes, a strict private school is similar to the Soviet gulag and should be discussed using similar language.

...

On June 12, 1965, Romney concluded his Cranbrook career at a commencement ceremony at the Christ Church, in which his father delivered a keynote address reported on by the local papers.

“This is a special occasion for us as a family,” George Romney told the gathered boys before emphasizing that religion and “the one girlfriend whom you finally take the greatest interest in” and good health habits were critical for a successful life. So, he said, was character. “Developing character is going to be more important than your education from now on.” The ceremony concluded with all the boys singing a final rendition of their school song, “Forty years on.”

“Forty years on, when afar and asunder

Parted are those who are singing today,

When you look back, and forgetfully wonder

What you were like in your work and your play,

Then, it may be, there will often come oÂ’er you,

Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song –

Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,

Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along,

Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!”

See, this is the bridge used to connect 1959 with 2004/2005. After all, Romney once quoted a poem called "Forty Years On." So he admits they're related!

Forty years on, Mitt Romney accepted the schoolÂ’s 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award.

A year earlier, John Joseph Lauber died at a Seattle hospital.

From Advanced Forcible Haircut Trauma, but no newspapers ever reported that.

Mitt Romney has now apologized for pranks which "might have gone too far."

And yet John Joesph Lauber, the Human Seamus, remains dead.

None of your apologies will bring this shattered man back to life, Governor.

You murdered him with those scissors. The wound just needed 46 years to claim its victim.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (411)
Post contains 1254 words, total size 8 kb.