Good appearance -- a little bit of fire -- from Romney, questioning Obama's curious new excuse that he just can't change things "on the inside."

"Isn't that amazing?" Romney asks rhetorically. (Incidentally, Romney sounds good, at least to me, in using this sort of phrasing, which strikes me as old-fashioned, but appealingly so. It's deployed with sarcasm to give it that new-fangled feel.)

Meanwhile, Governor Rick Perry joins those with messages for Obama written on their hands.

If you check Drudge's headline--

you'll see it's calculated to embarrass the media. Will it? I have this weird hopeful streak that they cannot look themselves in the mirror being such godawful shills, and yet they're okay with it, aren't they?

We see what happens when Obama's asked some difficult questions: He screws up. The reason we don't see this often is not that he is a cognitive high evolutionary; it's because he's never asked difficult questions. Questions about wedge issues. With follow-ups. With contradictions.

When he is asked these -- which, fortunately for him, he never is -- he stumbles like, what was that phrase I heard one time?, a Stuttering Clusterf**k of a Miserable Failure.

The press is big on gaaaaffes when it comes to Romney. Hey, maybe ask the Bumbleflop Incompetent in the Oval Office a tough question from time to time and check out the pure failure that comes tumbling out of his mouth, huh?

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:31 PM | Comments (502)
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It's on CSPAN-3 and streaming here.

Via Hot Air, who suggests this might be a preview of attacks on Obama's "You didn't build that" (and the defenses). And he got it from the Scourge of Elizabeth Warren, Legal Insurrection, which is doing a live blog.

Elizabeth Warren just asserted she gained no advantage by claiming she was the First Woman of Color professor in Ivy League schools. Brown challenged her to release her application materials, so we could see if she checked the box that said "Minority." Warren refused.

Posted by: Ace at 03:08 PM | Comments (232)
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Unexpectedly.

I've rather come to expect the unexpected under TFG, and not in a good way.

A reactor at Three Mile Island, the site of the nationÂ’s worst nuclear accident, shut down unexpectedly on Thursday afternoon when a coolant pump tripped and steam was released, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told NBC News.

The system tripped when "the pump stopped operating and created a power/flow imbalance," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.

The plant responded as designed and is stable with no impact on public health or safety, added NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci.

If any radiation was in the released steam, Screnci said, it would be below detectable levels.

By the way, I'm pretty damn sure that in the original Three Mile Island event they said the steam posed no significant health problems at first, too.

Nothing like 1979 -- just some steam released from a nuclear reactor. Nothing like 1979 at all.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (176)
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@justkarl tweeted this today (I think for reasons entirely unrelated to the "inside" comment).

Flashback to this Taranto piece from the campaign of 2008.

According to a new exposé in the liberal New Republic, Obama, before embarking on a career in politics... [quietly] repudiated "community organizing," only to re-embrace it decades later, apparently out of political expediency.

TNR's John Judis tracked down Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 "hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago's South Side." Kellman describes a conversation the two "community organizers" had at a conference on "social justice" in October 1987:

"[Obama] wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable income," Kellman recalls.

But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. . . .

And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school.

Another way of putting this might be that Obama left community organizing because he wanted a job in which he had actual responsibilities (and, of course, earned more money).

But Obama did not decide only that "community organizing" was not for him. Judis reports the future senator took part in a September 1989 symposium in which he "rejected the guiding principles of community organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion of politics itself." Later, Obama "would begin to construct a political identity for himself that was not simply different from his identity as a community organizer--but was, in fact, its very opposite."

So: Obama tried to get his version of results from the outside. He failed.

Today, he tells us that his attempt to get results from the inside was also a failure. Change must come from the outside (where he previously failed to secure it).

Outside, he fails.

Inside, he fails.

Unless there's some other category of sideriness I don't know of, it seems he just plain old fails.

Posted by: Ace at 02:26 PM | Comments (139)
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As Douglas Adams says: People are a problem.

So, we have this elderly, confused old lady. At least we thought she was trying to do something nice... she's just stupid. But nice.

Incompetent, stupid, and barking-dog crazy, but well-meaning.

But no. She's not that nice. She sees the glitter of gold and she wants some of it.

But popularity for the modified masterpiece grew with even budget airline Ryanair offering cheap deals to nearby Zaragoza airport encouraging "pilgrims" to visit the work that was quickly dubbed "Ecce Mono" – Behold the Monkey.

An internet petition to keep the repair job garnered widespread support and seizing an opportunity to swell its coffers, the church began levying a 4 euro (£3) entrance fee on visitors, earning 2,000 euros in the first four days.

Lawyers acting for Mrs Gimenez now insist she should be entitled to a cut of the profits, which she wants to go towards a charity of her choice.

"She just wants the church to conform to the law," lawyer Enrique Trebolle said. "If this means economic compensation she wants it to be for charitable purposes".

I try to be a realist about people. Meaning, I accept they are deeply, deeply flawed. That way, you can be a bit optimistic when they do nice things.

To elevate the human specimen is to court disappointment and bitterness. That's the way you become a misanthropic crank, by thinking people ought to be angels, and then being so savagely disappointed you instead brand them devils.

That said, sometimes I really hate people. This doddering old buffoon I at least thought meant well; turns out she's as corrupt as Croesus.

Via @rdbrewer4 from the sidebar.

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (260)
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"Natural."

resident Barack Obama said he thinks Muslim protests against Western criticism of Islam are “natural.”

“The natural protests that arose because of the video… were used as an excuse by extremists,” Obama said during an hour-long town-hall interview on the Spanish-language Univision channel.

Obama did not use the interview to affirm the First Amendment, or to champion the right of Americans to speak freely amid criticism and threats from Islamic advocates.

Meanwhile, we're sorry for your banditry.

U.S. Embassy advertisements condemning an anti-Islam video appeared on Pakistani television on Thursday in an attempt to undercut anger against the United States, where the film was produced. Hundreds of youths, however, clashed with security officials as they tried in vain to reach the embassy in Islamabad amid outrage in many countries over the filmÂ’s vulgar depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

...

The television ads in Pakistan feature clips of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during press appearances in Washington in which they condemned the video. Their words were subtitled in Urdu.

“We absolutely reject its content and message,” said Clinton in the advertisement.

Obama promised to sell American values of liberty abroad, but what he's actually doing is selling foreign values of blasphemy and Rule of Mob to America.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Comments (235)
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Now he tells us. After promising to change the world were he given the position of Ultimate Insider, the President.

Now it turns out it's all on us-- the man can only do so much. We have to carry him across the finish line. Us. We are the change we've been waiting for.

And if we screw things up, well, that's on us.

And of course Obama shifts the failure to "The System" or Washington, DC. As a coblog pointed out, this is the left's go-to formulation: Whenever they are defending a failed president, be it Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama, they begin insisting the country is just plain ol' "ungovernable."

We heard the same thing in 2010:

Leave it to Mickey Kaus, a principled liberal who supports health-care reform, to debunk these structural excuses: “Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama’s (possible/likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. . . . But in this case there’s a simpler explanation: Barack Obama’s job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed.”

You know who says success is impossible? Losers. It's all they have. Then someone demonstrates it is in fact possible, and they quietly slink back into the shadows, where they should have stayed.

More: Jonah Goldberg notices that Obama believed this in 2008, already. His belief was that his position as an outsider, though, would "inspire" people to Be The Change or whatever bullshit.

Well, that didn't work.

So now what? What's Plan B? Oh, right, Plan B is just Plan A again.

Let me clarify this, if I wasn't clear: In 2008 he already said he knew you "can't change Washington from the inside," but somehow his outsideriness would overcome this.

Well, it didn't.

So if he's explaining why it will be better from now on, he needs to offer a new plan.

But instead he's offering the old one -- the one he now concedes failed.

He's just pretending it's new, that it's something that he's learned over four years.

Nope.

Same crap as in 2008.

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (365)
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I don't know what to say about this.

He's a monster, for one thing. He's also an idiot ("the statute of limitations" has passed? No, double jeopardy has attached. Murder has no statute of limitations).

He presumably needs attention and money but mostly money.

Ask Kaelin today, this very minute, if O.J. — currently jailed in Vegas on a separate charge — killed his wife, and I repeat his exact words:

“The statute of limitations has now passed . . . so I can now say . . . yes, he did it.”

Why didnÂ’t he come forward and tell the truth? Ask why he let O.J. Simpson get away with murder, and I repeat his exact words:

“I was too scared. I was terrified.”

Time and his moment have passed. Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here together in memoriam of Kato Kaelin’s dead career. He says: “People hated me. I’ve been spat upon. They threw gum in my coffee.”

If he answered dishonestly under oath, hit him with perjury.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (219)
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Good piece, but I have to say, I'm not sure Libya is like the other two.

The government of Libya seemed very apologetic about the attack. The attack seems more about the US government's deadly negligence than theirs.

Egypt and Pakistan, on the other hand, are clearly Friends of Terrorism.

He has three specific demands made of these countries; he's not proposing, a la his father, a simple end to aid on principle.

From Libya he wants all suspects turned over to us.

From Egypt he wants a promise to protect our embassies.

And from Pakistan...

By now my colleagues in the Senate are familiar with the tragic story of Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi. Since Dr. Afridi was taken into custody by Pakistani officials in May 2012, I have been fighting for his release. I have also been working for a vote on a bill that would cut foreign aid to Pakistan until they free this ally of America.

In the weeks leading up to that attack on the compound by SEAL Team 6, there was a doctor in Pakistan who helped us determine Osama bin LadenÂ’s exact location. Dr. Afridi risked his own life to provide the American military with intelligence that confirmed the particular location of the bin Laden compound. The information provided by Dr. Afridi directly led to bin LadenÂ’s death.

Dr. Afridi remains under arrest and has been subject to torture. If Pakistan wants to be our ally — and receive foreign aid — then they should act like it, and they must start by releasing Dr. Afridi.

No action was taken to help Dr. Afridi or spirit him out of the country. Obama announced "We got him" and then everyone began leaking like crazy, and then this guy winds up being tortured and jailed for, effectively, life.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (168)
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Sometimes I scan the Daily Mail's bazillion "celebrity" stories so that you don't have to.

Carrot Top apparently has some wasting disease:

Oh wait that's Kathy Griffin.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (317)
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