Remember Peggy Noonan?

Well, I barely do, but this past week she opined:

The most recent polls suggest Dick Lugar, the senior U.S. senator from Indiana, first elected in 1976, is on track to lose his primary on Tuesday. I hope he doesn't for a number of reasons but one big one: the Senate needs grown-ups. The entire American government needs grown-ups, from Capitol Hill to the White House to the executive agencies. This is no time to lose one.

What Washington needs is sober and responsible adults.

...

So right now, and more than ever, we need mature folk involved in our governance, people for whom not everything is new.... There is value in the ability to take the long view, and do your best with modesty and with an eye toward all the big jumbly categories of America, which are not limited to "rightist" and "leftist."

Mr. Lugar, ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime leader on controlling nuclear proliferation, is a sober and genial fellow.

Well,reports that Dick Lugar is a mature, sober, responsible, modestly genial grown-up adult with a long-view take on things seem to have been greatly overstated.

Lugar skips Indiana GOP unity rally to support Mourdock

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 AM | Comments (235)
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Here.

Earlier ABCNews posted this headline: Obama: "Same-Sex Marriage Should be Legal"

So far he's laying the predicate for explaining how his position "evolved," though as that 1996 questionnaire demonstrates, it never evolved. He just lied about it for tactical political considerations.

He says "for me, personally" (for him?) "it's important to affirm that I believe same sex marriage should be legal."

I think that's the quote; I can't rewind but that's as I remember it.

Meanwhile, George Stephanopolous and Dianne Sawyer are greeting this news with giddy joy, as if they're drunk.

In Dianne's case, of course, that's not an "as if" thing at all.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (292)
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This "adjustment" of the labor force seems to be a Pandora's box of mischief and misrepresentation.

It is only because Obama's employment record is so bad that (supposedly, the BLS says) millions have stopped seeking work altogether and so the nominal unemployment rate has fallen.

The labor force increases in a good economy as workers enter the market. It falls in a bad economy, as some resign themselves to semi-permanent unemployment.

Obama's been lucky to have a jobs environment so bad that millions flee it, keeping his unemployment rate fraction at just over 8%.

But what if the millions who fled the labor market were not discouraged and still sought work?

Then the rate is literally off the chart -- off the original chart published by the Obama administration, predicting a fall in unemployment due to the stimulus.

That's the great Geoff's old chart, of course, now plotted with the freshest numbers.

Thanks to Andy, or @theH2 on twitter.

Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (133)
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Update: From @drewmtips, Ed Henry says he's told the president will "make some news" with his announcement.

Previously the claim had always been that the president wasn't making news; now he says he is. (Drew's excellent observation.)

I still think, though, he'll try to have it both ways.

...

Time for a gutsy call? I'm betting against it. Oh, he'll talk up gay marriage, but he'll still punt. He'll say something like he wants to help this process along, this process of increasing public acceptance of gay marriage, but he thinks it would be "counterproductive" to endorse it.

I know that doesn't really make sense but neither does Obama, most of the time. Because he lies, and lies usually don't make sense.

One senior official says he'll definitely endorse it after the election.

Marc Ambinder acts as if he knows something:

So do I think President Obama will endorse same-sex marriage today? Yes. Yes I do.

At that last link at Hot Air, some more on the punchline Obama's become, including Jon Stewart goofing on him. Allah also recommends this Onion article.

Obama Blasts Obama's Evasive Stance On Gay Marriage

'The President Needs To Come Clean On His Views,' Obama Says

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama lashed out at President Barack Obama's seemingly evasive stance on gay marriage Tuesday, calling the head-of-state's cagey position on the issue both "cowardly" and "an example of failed leadership."

Speaking to reporters from the White House East Room, Obama said that he has had enough of the president's endless hedging on same-sex marriage and that, as president of the United States, he can't just sit back and take a passive position on what he called the "most important civil rights issue of our time."

"President Obama's inability to simply state whether he's for or against gay marriage is unacceptable," Obama said during a spirited 30-minute address in which he sharply criticized the president for failing time and again to articulate his beliefs. "This nonsense where he says his views are 'evolving' isn't going to cut it anymore. It's patronizing and it's wrong."

"Mr. President," the president continued, "I am waiting for your answer. We all are."

More: Obama always supported gay marriage; he's just been lying about it.

Answering a questionnaire in 1996, he wrote: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."

Also thanks to @drewmtips

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (312)
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Most of the headlines at the Telegraph speak of "rape," but it's not entirely clear what type of rape is being alleged -- statutory rape, forcible rape, or a type of forcible rape premised on getting a girl too drunk to give valid consent?

In some specific cases I'm reading, it seems more like a combination of the first (statutory) and the last (rape by drunkenness) mixed with, maybe, the implication that the girls were not free to leave until they returned something in exchange for the vodka.

Given that 47 victims are alleged, and more suspected, it's possible/likely that a variety of rapes occurred.

Multiple stories refer to this as "child grooming," which suggests statutory rape, not forcible rape.

“He drove me to a house in Nelson. We were just sitting in the front room and that, talking and drinking the vodka he’d bought, and he told me to go upstairs.

“I was just young and stupid so I went. Afterwards he took me home.”
She added: “It didn’t feel like rape at the time, but now I feel it was because I was under age. Looking back, I think he was just using me because I was vulnerable and white.

I'm not saying this isn't a crime, just trying to be accurate about the facts -- this doesn't seem to be a marauding gang of forcible rapists, by and large, as we've seen in other countries. More like how a pimp "turns out" a young prostitute-- more a crime of the exploitation of youth and vulnerability than a crime of force. The pimp basically exploits a vulnerable girl or woman until she's so sexually degraded she no longer revolts at the idea of having sex with unattractive strangers.

(By the way, I'm just reading about this now -- I could be wrong. But this is the sense I'm getting from four articles.)

That said, the police do not seem to have acted on previous complaints with any degree of urgency.

"This is an absolute scandal. They were petrified of being called racist and so reverted to the default of political correctness," she said.

"They had a greater fear of being perceived in that light than in dealing with the issues in front of them."

Girl A told police that she had been raped and provided DNA evidence from her attacker, however the CPS twice decided not to prosecute him.

The 15 year-old's abuse continued and at its height she was being driven to flats and houses to be raped by up to five men a night, four or five days a week. She was singled out because she was white, vulnerable and under-age.

Her ordeal only ended when her teachers forced social workers to intervene after she fell pregnant and they became concerned by the number of Asian men picking her up from school....

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood acknowledged that officers could have dealt with the case "better than we did".

But he denied that the girl's complaints had been "brushed under the carpet" because officers were reluctant to confront the issue of race.

"At the time we did what we thought was best," he said. "We have learned a lot of lessons.

If you read that article, you'll see that one complaining witness says she was being raped by up to five men, day after day, and yet was not being kept prisoner; so, again, I get the sense this is an exploitation case and statutory rape rather than forcible rape. I don't get the "day after day" thing if it's the latter.

But of course this is monstrous still, and the very reason we have statutory rape laws in the first place: Young girls are not legally capable of giving valid consent to older men. And I guess part of the reason for the statutory rape law is that we're really not interested in parsing in precisely what way and older man has raped a younger girl and make thin decisions about whether drugging a girl with vodka is okay but drugging her with Valium is dirty pool.

Posted by: Ace at 08:48 AM | Comments (243)
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Jonathan Chait....idiot.

The most important and alarming facet of LugarÂ’s defeat, and a factor whose importance is being overlooked at the moment, is one of the things Mourdock cited against him: Lugar voted to confirm two of ObamaÂ’s Supreme Court nominees. Obviously, Lugar would not have chosen to nominate an Elena Kagan or a Sonia Sotomayor. But he was following a longstanding practice of extending presidents wide ideological latitude on their Supreme Court picks. In the absence of corruption, lack of qualifications, or unusual ideological extremism, Democratic presidents have always been allowed to pick liberal justices, and Republican presidents conservative ones. ThatÂ’s not a law. ItÂ’s just a social norm.

...

The social norm against blocking qualified, mainstream Supreme Court nominees is one of the few remaining weapons the Republican Party has left lying on the ground. But if Republican senators attribute Lugar’s defeat even in part to those votes for Kagan and Sotomayor, which seems to be the case, what incentive do they have to vote for another Obama nominee? And then what will happen if he gets another vacancy to fill – will Republican senators allow him to seat any recognizably Democratic jurist? Especially as the Supreme Court interjects itself more forcefully into partisan disputes like health care, will it become commonplace for the Court to have several vacancies owing to gridlock, for the whole legitimacy of the institution to collapse?

It's funny but I seem to recall the Republic surviving the defeat of Robert Bork. Of course Chait would argue that Bork wasn't in the "mainstream". Well, let's then consider the vote of one Senator, a chap named Barack Obama. He and many Democrats voted against the confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. In fact, Obama supported the highly controversial effort to filibuster Bush's Supreme Court nominations.

Liberals like Chait want to live in a world where if liberals can't get their way all the time, they at least get to make the rules up. Liberals must curse Al Gore for inventing the internet because it's one of the great tools conservatives have to push back on the liberals near monopoly on the traditional media.

Story via Philip Klein.

(I corrected the first link. Naturally there has to be a dumb mistake when yo call someone an idiot. It's just science.)

Posted by: DrewM at 08:00 AM | Comments (182)
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Sounds like it.

President Obama, who is under mounting pressure to clarify his thinking on same-sex marriage after top aides publicly embraced it in recent days, will sit down for an interview with ABC News on Wednesday during which he is likely to discuss his “evolving” views on the issue, according to people familiar with the matter.

The interview, to be conducted by Robin Roberts, an anchor on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. and was secured in the wake of a declaration by Mr. Obama’s vice president, Joseph R. Biden, on Sunday that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriages.

...

ABC secured the interview with Mr. Obama on Tuesday afternoon, according to two people involved in the planning. It will take place at the White House. The interview was so hastily arranged, in fact, that Ms. Roberts was still in New York on Wednesday morning to co-host “Good Morning America”– and was planning on returning to New York right after the interview, because her mother is visiting and the two have dinner plans on Wednesday evening.

It seems very unlikely that in the midst of all of this he's holding an interview to trot out his same old, "still evolving" line.

If he does admit what we all know, it's simply to quell the revolt from his base over the issue. Sure, they'll try to spin this as a choice between the forces of good (led by their newest recruit Barack Obama) and Evil (Mitt Romney) but it's unlikely to persuade anyone with half a brain. So bottom line...maybe Megan McCain will be moved but that's about it.

This move would not win him any independents for sure. Not even Kos' own pollster buys into the "but a majority support it!" crap we are always seeing.

Hate to say it but I don't believe polls showing majority support for gay marriage nationally. Any time there's a vote it doesn't back it up

I have no doubt gay marriage will be legal across the US in the relatively near future as there's no doubt about the generation gab on the issue but it's not going to sway this election.

I hope Obama comes clean and we can just move on to something important like say...the wretched state of the economy.

Added: Will this be enough to ensure So-cons come out for Mitt? Everyone already assumes Obama supports it but an out and out declaration might be something that motivates the last hold outs on the religious right.

Related enough: Democrats are pretty mad about two states today, North Carolina over Amendment One and West Virginia over the felon vote. Keep in mind a few facts: Both states have Democratic governors, 3 or their 4 Senators are Democrats, Obama won North Carolina and picked that state to host his renomination convention.

Damn Rightwing nutters!

Posted by: DrewM at 06:07 AM | Comments (394)
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Not according to some internet poll but among actual voters in last night's primary.

Inmate 11593-051 in 2012!

The inmate, Keith Judd, is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. With 93 percent of precincts reporting, Obama was receiving just under 60 percent of the vote to Judd's 40 percent.

For some West Virginia Democrats, simply running against Obama is enough to get Judd votes.

"I voted against Obama," said Ronnie Brown, a 43-year-old electrician from Cross Lanes who called himself a conservative Democrat. "I don't like him. He didn't carry the state before and I'm not going to let him carry it again."

When asked which presidential candidate he voted for, Brown said, "That guy out of Texas."

Judd was able to get on the state ballot by paying a $2,500 fee and filing a form known as a notarized certification of announcement, said Jake Glance, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's office.

How unpopular is Obama in West Virgina? Joe Manchin, a Democratic Senator from the state won't say who he voted for. So a guy running for re-election this year would rather leave open the possibility he voted for an imprisoned felon rather than his party's sitting President.

Judd actually won more than enough votes to get delegates to the Democratic convention in North Carolina but he didn't register any.

Speaking of this year's Democratic convention...the voters of North Carolina rewarded Obama's decision to have the convention in their state by ratifying his anti-same sex marriage position in their Constitution. Naturally this makes them bigots or something.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:20 AM | Comments (159)
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Happy Wednesday.

Not much news from me this morning. Actually no news, just three stories that caught my eye.

First, an article on tattooed congressmen. Includes the observation that not many are willing to talk about their tattoos.

Second, the wiseass over at Film Drunk did the math on Miley Cyrus' latest big-screen flop.

LOL‘s per-screen average was $440. Divide that by $11, which is about your average ticket price, and it comes out to 40 people per theater who saw LOL this weekend. The closest theater to me showing LOL had five showings per day. Multiply that by three days, fifteen showings, and that’s 40 people into 15 screenings, meaning, if my math serves (and I fully acknowledge that it might not), that the average screening of LOL had LESS THAN THREE VIEWERS (2.667).

Ouch.

Third, Romney shoots down the silly rumor, possibly started by Hermain Cain, that he's going to have a "unity tour" with his former rivals for the GOP nomination.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (266)
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In a feat of organization so intricate and smoothly coordinated that it could've only happened at the HQ, I'll be providing you another thrilling, if abbreviated, ONT tonight.

At least Slublog was kind enough to provide some content.

more...

Posted by: andy at 06:53 PM | Comments (477)
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