August 28, 2012
— Guest Blogger You would think after the Joe Soptic debacle these Obama minions would do a better job with their Romney attack ads. You know, simple stuff like vetting the stars of their ads. Yet the amateurish efforts continue, like the alleged "Republican Women for Obama" turn out to be hardcore Democrats.
So to coincide with the start of the GOP Convention, Bill Burton's Super PAC, still licking the wounds from the Soptic ad, unveils a woman named Olive Chase, described here as a small business owner.
The ad paid for by Priorities USA Action, a super-political action committee headed by former Obama aides, features Olive Chase, a registered independent and small business owner in Massachusetts. She voted for Romney in 2002 when he won the governorship of that state and she gave money to his campaign. Ten years later, she is no longer a supporter.Just one little problem. Olive is much more than a small business owner, as noted in 2007, the year after Romney left office."Governor Romney cares about big business; he cares about tax cuts for wealthy people, and I certainly do not believe he cares about my hardworking employees," Chase says in the ad. "I feel like I was duped by Mitt Romney. I'm going to vote for President Obama."
Aside from four Casual Gourmet locations, an upscale café at Cape Cod Hospital and clubhouses at the Sandwich Hollows and Captains Golf Course in Brewster, off premise catering is the mainstay of the business. It's grown to include company outings, glittery fundraising events, cocktail parties, and funerals and their list of clients reads like a "Who's Who" of the area and beyond. Despite all her success Olive still has her feet on the ground.Obviously the Romney years took a devastating toll on Olive's business.
Today we have four food service contracts. Cape Cod Health Care is my largest client. We're known mostly for our off premise catering. We do 75 to 100 weddings off premise each year. I write 90 percent of the menus and design the events. We're the largest caterer on Cape Cod and one of the largest in Southeast massachusetts. I derive the most pleasure from event planning. I don't like to quote figures but we do about $3,000,0000 a year in catering.Since math is so hard these days, we'll figure that sum should be $3,000,000, quite a haul for small business owner these days.
So a woman whose business boomed during Romney's reign as governor was "duped" by him. Seems more like Obama's media is being duped again by Priorities USA. We also notice Chase repeats the same line from an earlier Obama ad (coordination, anyone?) that has already been discredited.
The ad states that job creation in Massachusetts "fell" to 47th under Romney. That's a bit misleading. Massachusetts' state ranking for job growth went from 50th the year before he took office, to 28th in his final year. It was 47th for the whole of his four-year tenure, but it was improving, not declining, when he left.We suspect much like Joe Soptic that Olive Chase won't be available for interviews. more...
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— DrewM Greetings from the fair city of Indianapolis where the American Legion is holding its annual convention*.
IÂ’ll be here for the next couple of days actually doing some original stories from around the convention, including attending the scheduled speech by Mitt Romney on Wednesday. If I get a chance, I'll tell him you said, "hi".
With the economy, entitlement reform and various and sundry SQUIRRELS! monopolizing most of the campaign conversation not a lot of attention has been paid to national security/military issues. But as you might imagine at a convention with thousands of military veterans, those issues are front and center here.
Yesterday's national security symposium focused heavily on the upcoming sequestration cuts and what they would mean to the military, coming on top of cuts already ordered by the Obama administration and agreed to by Congress (reduction in planed growth/percentage of overall budget but for better or worse that’s always been considered “a cut” in DC) . Combined, the $498 Billion in cuts from last summer and the potential $500 Billion in sequestration over the next decade would deal a devastating blow to national defense.
As defense analyst Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute argued here the sequestration cuts would be particularly devastating in that thereÂ’s no strategic rationale for any of them, itÂ’s simply an arbitrary number that Department of Defense will have to make work. Everything from advanced weapons research and procurement to office supplies maybe cut to get to the number, regardless of their importance or impact on current or future operations.
Sequestration would come after two years in which the government has been funded by a Continuing Resolution which for the most part freezes priorities in place and can be hard to get around. She told a terrifying story of how the service chiefs have had to march up to Congress to get basic projects funded. In one case the Army needed to procure four new Chinook helicopters for a unit that was either in or about to go to Afghanistan. They simply didnÂ’t have the standing authority to procure new ones so they had to get Congress to fund a one off order for a unit at war.
Ike Skelton, the former Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee was also on the panel. HeÂ’s an anachronismÂ….a pro-defense Democrat. He talked about how his dad made a new friend at a dedication of an American Legion hall back in Missouri after WWI. That friend, who would later become SkeltonÂ’s friend as well, was then county judge Harry Truman. ThatÂ’s the kind of old school Democrat Skelton is. If you didnÂ’t know he was a Democrat, you would have thought you were listening to a Republican member of Congress. They just arenÂ’t making Democrats like that anymore. more...
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— Gabriel Malor Happy Tuesday.
Boy, there really isn't any new politics news out there. The unplanned day off from Isaac slowed things way, way down. The only thing worth mentioning is this counterintuitive piece, "How Isaac Could Actually Help Mitt Romney," which was probably headlined "Conventions Don't Really Matter Any More" in its original version.
In other news, a new study finds that smoking weed regularly as a teenager can lower IQ permanently. Dude. Duuuuuuude.
The Apple IP win against Samsung is likely to raise the price of smartphones and tablets, though analysts hope that it also spurs some innovation.
A man was hit by two cars and killed while, apparently, attempting to fool passing drivers into calling in a Sasquatch sighting. The report vaguely and stupidly states that "alcohol may have been involved" but doesn't explain whether it was the drivers (one of whom was only 15 years old) doing the drinking or the Sasquatch impersonator or both.
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August 27, 2012
— Maetenloch
Little House on the Prairie - Now With Serial Killers?
When Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her Little House on the Prairie books, she also left out some details that would be too uh, colorful for children. Here's an account she gave in a lecture in 1937:
There were Kate Bender and two men, her brothers, in the family and their tavern was the only place for travelers to stop on the road south from Independence. People disappeared on that road. Leaving Independence and going south they were never heard of again. It was thought they were killed by Indians but no bodies were ever found.Then it was noticed that the Benders' garden was always freshly plowed but never planted. People wondered. And then a man came from the east looking for his brother, who was missing.
... In the cellar underneath was the body of a man whose head had been crushed by the hammer. It appeared that he had been seated at the table back to the curtain and had been struck from behind it. A grave was partly dug in the garden with a shovel close by. The posse searched the garden and dug up human bones and bodies. One body was that of a little girl who had been buried alive with her murdered parents. The garden was truly a grave-yard kept plowed so it would show no signs. The night of the day the bodies were found a neighbor rode up to our house and talked earnestly with Pa. Pa took his rifle down from its place over the door and said to Ma, "The vigilantes are called out." Then he saddled a horse and rode away with the neighbor. It was late the next day when he came back and he never told us where he had been. For several years there was more or less a hunt for the Benders and reports that they had been seen here or there. At such times Pa always said in a strange tone of finality, "They will never be found."
The Benders of Kansas were actual serial killers but unfortunately for Wilder's account they weren't discovered until 1873, two years after the Ingalls family left Kansas. Still I would enjoy hearing more of the 'uncensored' version of her books.
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— andy Open blog, you say? I guess it's time to do what Ace does and just swipe some content from Hot Air (video embedded below the fold).
The problem isnÂ’t that Tingles is willing to presume racism; the problem is that his presumption is irrebuttable, with subconscious racism the inevitable fallback presumption in cases like these when the accused protests vehemently enough. YouÂ’re guilty, even if you donÂ’t know it.
True. He always frames it as "have you stopped beating your wife?" and then talks over you as you try to make your point. And he's been doing it for decades.
But here's a little value-add over and above cribbing from Allah via James Taranto's WSJ column today. It's a point that never seems to dawn on Tingles and the rest of the dog whistle crowd as we laugh at them.
The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it's intended for somebody else. The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you're the dog.
Read the whole thing. more...
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— Ace This is lame, but I figure I'll have to cover the convention for the next three days, so I'm calling half-day.
A repeat of Adam Baldwin's guest-spot on Castle is on tonight. So, that's something.
Here are some quickie movie reviews: more...
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— Ace In the old times, we didn't hear from celebrities except when they went on talk shows to say the same three things: "I loved this script," "I always wanted to work with this director," and "My co-star was so giving."
In related news: Cannibis, especially early and habitual use, reduces IQ.
I guess we always sort of knew that.
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— Ace Allah notes the "media concern-trolling" over a hypothetical partial cancellation of the Republican convention; the media is already salivating over doing split-screen reportage -- Republicans playing politics while Isaac rages -- should the get the opportunity.
Reince Priebus acknowledges that further changes may be necessary.
Right now, I have not had a single discussion about doing anything other than going forward with the events and the schedule that we have planned. I will say, though, that we have to be nimble. And everyone can see that we can be nimble if we need to be. We have the ability to make alternative plans if we have to, but right now we feel that our message of the American dream and fixing this economy and putting ourselves on the right track for the future of this country — I think it’s a positive message and it’s a message that will always be good. When we’re optimistic about the future and how we’re going to fix this great country and put people back to work, it’s a message that works all the time.Certainly, we have to be mindful of the effects of the hurricane and what that means to people who are pretty close by here.
I have been thinking about a meta-thought idea lately. Whenever something bad happens, people spring to insisting on the ways it could have been avoided. "Why did the Republicans schedule a convention in Tampa during hurricane season?" goes one such line of thinking.
But the convention will always take place during hurricane and tornado season; is the suggestion that no party should ever select a city for a convention in an area hit by hurricanes or tornadoes in late summer?
What about floods?
The whole east coast gets hit by hurricanes. Maybe Boston's pretty safe, but NJ and NY aren't. If we're planning to have conventions in areas that don't experience tough weather in late summer... not sure which areas of the country are on that list. West Coast and southwest, I guess. High Plains and Norris Division. That's pretty much it.
Then again-- while droughts aren't spectacular to look at, they cause a great deal of human suffering.
Whenever something bad happens, I think we're predisposed to try to create some rule that, if that rule had been followed, we wouldn't be in the current mess.
But much of this is just fantasy. Chance can never really be outfoxed. The human brain simply is not up to the task of outwitting random happenstance.
You see this all the time whenever there's a shooting.
Chaos is smarter than any one of us and probably smarter than all of us put together.
"This is your best post ever!!!
It's like a boner for the mind!!!"
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— Ace Death penalty? Yes please.
One guy has been permitted to plead to manslaughter in exchange for information about the other terrorists. The rest, though, could hang.
One of the plotters described himself as "the nicest cold-blooded murderer you will ever meet."
Incidentally, it's murder all the way down with these guys:
Pauley said Aguigui funded the militia using $500,000 in insurance and benefit payments from the death of his pregnant wife a year ago. Aguigui was not charged in his wife's death, but Pauley told the judge her death was "highly suspicious."
Lately it keeps occurring to me that for some, "politics" is just a way to dress up a deep-down sociopathy in "heroic" terms. You see a lot of this on both sides; loathsome people use the pretext of "politics," right or left, to justify cruelty and murder and terrorism.
"Anarchist"? It's an old trick of the media to call Neo-Nazis "right-wing" but then simply call left-wingers what they identify themselves as. "Anarchists," for example.
Now, I initially thought these guys had to be right-wing (or what the media terms "right-wing") because I could not imagine a left-wing motive here.
But a commenter points out the left wing is extremely angry about poor Bradley Manning, America's Pluckiest Little Traitor.
So I guess that is an open possibility, and would explain the media not immediately calling these guys "rightwing."
I do find that very suspicious. I find it suspicious that this isn't the biggest story in the media. If it's not, there must be a reason the media is in "let's be restrained here" mode.
Not sure, obviously. But I am wondering about that.
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— CAC Senate races that need your money:
MONTANA- Rehberg
WISCONSIN- Thompson
NORTH DAKOTA- Berg
FLORIDA- Mack
VIRGINIA- Allen
OHIO- Mandel
NEW MEXICO- Wilson
MAINE- Summers
MICHIGAN! Hoekstra
MASSACHUSETTS- Brown
CONNECTICUT- McMahon
Current #AOSHQDD call: +WI,ND,MT,NE R-50 D-50
Let's push that number higher.
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