It's my sense this particular star has faded.

He doesn't say he would agree; just that he'd take Romney's call and listen to him.

Um, duh?

"This is an election with one voter, Mitt Romney. He gets to decide who he thinks should be the vice president of the United States," Christie said. "I love being governor of New Jersey, you can tell. But the fact is, if Gov. Romney picks up the phone and calls, you have to answer the call and listen at least."

I'm thinking more Jindal.

Sometimes Christie annoys me, as he did when he asked a reporter if he was "stupid" for asking an off-topic question. He then apologized for "that idiot."

It's not that I give a fig about the reporter's feelings. It's that I don't buy that a governor -- or a president like Obama -- can lay down the law as regards what questions can be asked.

Christie can declare he's only answering on-topic questions -- that's fine, and his right. But when he presumes to order citizens to only ask him questions he's willing to entertain, that demonstrates, to me, a mistaken understanding of the relationship between, as I think Justice Kennedy once said, so long ago, "government and the individual."

Oh, it's not disqualifying in and of itself. It's sort of a "Who cares?" kind of thing. But I don't expect that to play well. It seems gratuitously bossy.

Do I like the fact that he's hostile to the press? Sure. But I don't like the how-dare-you attitude about it.

As far as electoral math: If Romney even has a shot at winning New Jersey with Chris Christie, then Romney doesn't need Chris Christie or New Jersey, because other states (with less steep tipping points) will fall before New Jersey.

Does his brash New Jersey tough-guy persona win voters in other states? I don't know. I think the low-information, disengaged voters we need to win are the sorts of saps who say stupid things like "We need a more civil discourse" and "We need facts not personal attacks" and "We need to be less partisan." All of those safe, question-ducking things -- if you cannot make up your mind about what direction you'd like to see the country go in (in fact, you've never even bothered to think about the question too hard) it's always a nice, safe-sounding cop-out to say you'd like people to "work together" and "reach compromises."

And on that front: I think Christie is a compromiser (which conservatives don't like) but he has the image as a defiant partisan barb-thrower (which the squishy moderate muddleheads don't like).

So I just don't know if I love him for the job.

Posted by: Ace at 12:34 PM | Comments (227)
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Bonus: Dem Legislator Scores Own Goal

This law will eventually allow fracking permits to start being issued in North Carolina.

...the General Assembly has overridden Gov. Beverly Perdue's veto of a bill that sets rules and regulations for the form of shale gas production.

The House voted late Monday night 72-47 in favor of overriding her veto.

Gov. Beverly Perdue's effort to block the law was foiled by the fickle finger of Fate.

A veto by North Carolina's Democratic governor was overridden Monday night because a Democrat in the state House cast the deciding vote, by accident.
--------------snip----

Just after the vote, Carney's voice could be heard on her microphone, saying, "Oh, my gosh. I pushed green."

Because of Carney's blunder, a fracking bill that Gov. Beverly Perdue had vetoed is now law.

Posted by: LauraW at 11:24 AM | Comments (250)
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Of course.

An Oregon town has reportedly canceled its annual fireworks show out of concern the Fourth of July pyrotechnics will scare sea birds roosting nearby.

Town officials in Depoe Bay have announced the cancellation of the annual pre-Independence Day fireworks show on July 3 following pressure from federal wildlife managers who said the noise disrupts sea birds in the area, the Oregonian reports.

The move has irked local business owners who count on the popular show to bring foot traffic.

I have no doubt that fireworks will "disrupt" sea birds. Just as I have no doubt that God's Own Fireworks Show, aka lighting storms, "disrupts" them.

They seem to have hacked lightning storms for 20,000 years, so far. Can a bird tell the difference between lightning-and-thunder and fireworks? The only difference is that fireworks have smoke and the smell of cordite. But lightning brings the smell of ozone.

Is there any evidence they're cool with ozone but not cordite? Or are we once again employing the non-scientific "axiom" that if it's "natural" it's good?

God schedules twenty or so fireworks displays per summer. Humans schedule one more. I think the sea birds can handle a 5% increase in fireworks displays.

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (210)
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At Politico:

“It’s a tax,” the Florida Republican told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. “I think that the governor probably needs to look at who he has within his circle of advisers, and probably get … them to provide the right type of counsel and advice.”

This was precipitated by Romney adviser Eric Fernstrohm agreeing that ObamaTax was not a tax -- his argument is that it's not a tax, it's a penalty, ergo it's unconstitutional.

Now, this argument has appeal to Romney because he also imposed a mandate, and doesn't want the "tax-hiker!" charge leveled at himself.

But here's the thing: If ObamaTax is in fact a tax, then doesn't that mean... Justice Roberts got it right?

There's a lot of games-playing going on with politics, obviously. We're in campaign season, after all. The candidates do it, we do it.

I think a little too much is being pushed on to this point. On one hand, we're trying to recover some win from Roberts' disastrous decision by saying, "Well, at least he said it was a tax; that's politically useful."

On the other hand, we're insisting he got it wrong.

Well, if it got it wrong, it's not a tax. (Or I suppose there is a way to thread this needle: It's a tax, but an illegal tax, because it is not imposed for purposes of general revenues, but to force people into compliance with a federal law in an area the federal government has no authority... which actually winds up being a penalty, not a tax, so I guess that doesn't work.)

There's a lot of having-it-both-ways going on from all corners. Including from activists and pundits. I'm not sure how you can, in a single breath, declare Roberts' opinion in great error, and then castigate Romney for not embracing the erroneous opinion.

I Also Don't Get... Why this is supposedly a politically effective characterization.

People already didn't like the mandate. They didn't like it for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that they didn't like ObamaTax's takeover of health care, and the mandate was the most vulnerable avenue for undoing it.

People know what the mandate is. I think. Okay, I agree, some nitwits still don't know what it is, but whether they'll ever understand is anyone's guess.

But my point is people already have opinions on the mandate. Mostly, anyway. Does their opinion change if it's retroactively declared a "tax"? We can call things whatever we like, I guess; does that change the nature of what they are?

The people who didn't like the mandate -- more than a majority -- will, presumably, continue not liking it, knowing it's been declared a tax. No change there.

The people who like the mandate -- well, few actually like the mandate; but people who like Obama, and want him to get his Big Win -- like taxes so they don't really care all that much.

I guess we're down to those very, very low-information voters who might still have no opinion. But will their opinions be changed by the odd fact pattern that something that was claimed not to be a tax, and which looks like a penalty for noncompliance, is retroactively deemed a tax by the Supreme Court, in an opinion that neither the left nor the right embraces as sound in its reasoning?

This doesn't mean we shouldn't call ObamaTax a tax. Obviously, I'm doing it like crazy (and in fact I was, as far as I know, the first to call it ObamaTax).

But there's this attempt to claim that this is the point that swings the election, and we must all be on the same page about this, and then... I don't know. I find this habit annoying, the We Must All Agree To Agree thing.

So, call it a tax. I will. But how much does this actually matter? Even if we were all on the same page -- and Romney declared, "Yes, I raised taxes on Massachusetts taxpayers, just as Obama did on American ones" -- how much of an impact would our Unified Front actually have?

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (314)
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If he wanted to demonstrate the Supreme Court was apolitical, he shouldn't have bowed to political pressure. Right?

Last Friday on NPR, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne said something very revealing about why Chief Justice John Roberts decided to affirm the constitutionality of ObamaCare. The remarks proved even more enlightening when we learned for a certainty from peerless Supreme Court reporter Jan Crawford that Roberts did indeed change his mind a month after voting it down with the conservative bloc.

“I think Justice Roberts in this case saw . . . the attacks that [the high court] was facing from lots of people — including me, I should say — were just going to escalate,” Dionne said. This was a problem for Roberts, the pundit surmised, because Dionne & Co. were raising doubts about “the legitimacy of the court, which has already been called into question by decisions from Bush v. Gore through Citizens United.”

This rhetorical assault against the court “was going to escalate further,” Dionne said. “And I think he was trying to avoid that.”

And Crawford's report at CBS suggest that's exactly what happened. After first voting to strike down the mandate...

“[O]ver the next six weeks, as Roberts began to craft the decision striking down the mandate, the external pressure began to grow.”

This mattered, says Crawford, because “Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As chief justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court, and he also is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public. There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the court — and to Roberts’ reputation — if the court were to strike down the mandate.”

And so, sources told Crawford, Roberts got “wobbly.”

Posted by: Ace at 09:08 AM | Comments (435)
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Dead at 86.

Completely Forgot... that one of his last roles was as a shill for ObamaTax.

Posted by: Ace at 08:45 AM | Comments (196)
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New RNC ad below the fold ... just in time for July 4th.

Or, as John Roberts calls it, April 15th.

Four years ago today at a campaign event, Candidate Obama said that adding $4 trillion to the debt was "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic." During his three years in office the "undisputed debt king" has added over $5 trillion to the national debt and has racked up the largest deficits in U.S. history.

Posted by: andy at 03:43 AM | Comments (606)
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Happy Tuesday.

I got nuthin', mostly because I couldn't sleep last night and then got up to play Civ V: Gods and Kings until the wee hours and then overslept just now. Life.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (113)
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Due to declining participation and rather disappointing spring Nielsens management has decided to switch over to an all cute animals ONT format until further notice.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:28 PM | Comments (517)
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Meh. I always felt a little odd the right getting all silly about this kid, especially because we were so annoyed at other youngster's being used as ventriloquist dolls by their liberal parents.

What does a 13 year old know? Nothing.

What does a 17 year old know? Slightly less.

At Politico:

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough."

But now, at age 17... game on, bitches.

Krohn wonÂ’t go so far as to say heÂ’s liberal, in part because his move away from conservatism was a move away from ideological boxes in general.

...

But a quick rundown of his current political stances suggests a serious pendulum swing away from the right.

Gay marriage? In favor. Obamacare? “It’s a good idea.” Who would he vote for (if he could) in November? “Probably Barack Obama.” His favorite TV shows? “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” His favorite magazine? The New Yorker.

Shinebox.

Posted by: Ace at 03:50 PM | Comments (332)
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