The only way they know how.

That tower of champagne (actually the Ace of Spades brand) is worth over $100,000.

President Barack Obama attended a fundraiser at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan that featured a champagne tower of 350 bottles worth $105,000 - more than twice the median household income of an American family.

...

The median income for an American family was $51,413 in 2011.

Obama's fightin' for all of us.

Posted by: Ace at 01:58 PM | Comments (288)
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Internal poll, and certainly cherry-picked (they don't publish the ones showing Romney more behind), but what the hey.

And Rasmussen has it 48-45, advantage Romney, in New Hampshire.

If Ohio keeps being a dick, this might become important.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (181)
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They want the quote "redistribution of wealth," so they feature Steve Krofft saying it.

Are they aware Obama said exactly this phrase in a 2001 WBEZ interview, talking up how we can get "redistribution of wealth" and "redistributive change?" more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 PM | Comments (191)
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Hmmm...

I don't believe it went "off by itself." I think it's been edited -- either to protect the source (who a commenter suggests might be one of the waitstaff, and would be fired if his or her identity were known to her employer) or to edit out something Romney said which would add context to his remarks.

What is Mother Jones hiding?

Via @rdbrewer4.

Posted by: Ace at 12:18 PM | Comments (199)
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I'm not sure if this is a white-wash or a partial white-wash. After all this time, I don't see a lot of tough conclusions here. What I see is one guy set up to take the blame, and some CYA stuff that "questions remain."

Wasn't it your job to answer those questions? What is the point of a one year investigation which seems to conclude "more evidence is needed"?

If more evidence is needed, isn't that a serious indictment of Eric Holder right there? He's the one refusing to turn over evidence.

Here, however, are some excerpts from the FoxNews article.

A bombshell report released Wednesday on Operation Fast and Furious faulted a range of federal agencies for the failed anti-gunrunning program and accused officials in charge of a "disregard" for public safety. In the wake of the report, one Justice Department official resigned.

First whitewash: Holder didn't know.

...

The report says Attorney General Eric Holder was not made aware of potential flaws in the program until February of last year. But the report cites 14 other department employees -- including Criminal Division head Lanny Breuer -- for potential wrongdoing, recommending the department consider disciplinary action against them.

It also marked Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, as the highest-ranking DOJ employee in a position to stop the program...

The report slams both ATF Phoenix and the U.S. Attorney's Office for not taking action....

"Indeed, no one responsible for the case at either ATF Phoenix Field Division or the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona raised a serious question or concern about the government not taking earlier measures to disrupt a trafficking operation that continued to purchase firearms with impunity for many months," the report said. "Similarly, we did not find persuasive evidence that any supervisor in Phoenix, at either the U.S. Attorney's Office or ATF, raised serious questions or concerns about the risk to public safety posed by the continuing firearms purchases or by the delay in arresting individuals who were engaging in the trafficking.

This is all very nebulous to me. We have a lot about failure to act, but who actually cooked this up? Who signed off on it?

When you direct blame generally, at large groups, that hardly advances the prosecutorial ball. Because you're not singling out individual bad actors.

Which is what an investigator is supposed to do.

This report seems to tell us "mistakes were made." Yes, that's a load for that. This is something we've known for two years.

Who, specifically, authorized this? Who covered it up?

After a year of investigating, this CYA document is it? This is the report that's supposed to resolve the issue?

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (190)
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Bumped for a new gag at the end.

I noted this in updates to the previous post. But this is actually A Thing, so let's get to it.

Liberals are now writing their reasons for supporting Obama on their hands, and then taking a picture, and then sharing that picture with the world.

This seems charming when Natalie Portman does it...

...desperate and scary when former actor Jared Leto does it (and no, I don't know who he is either)...

...and looks like a full-fledged Amber Alert when Obama punk Jim Messina does it.

This is the part of the movie where Sandra Bullock, playing an FBI profiler, says, "He wants to be caught... He wants us to stop him."

Now, I've looted Twitchy, but I've left something behind: The parodies of this have begun.

Now, via @bdomenech, a Meme Generator for adding snarky headlines to the Jim Messina Cry for Help.

The only problem is: There's only one joke here with a couple of dozen variations. We are all thinking exactly the same thing, and what we're thinking is: One day we will find his cache of Clown Paintings.

Original Messina Photo...?

P-shop by @slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (685)
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I thought Mary Katharine Ham was wasting my time with this reality-TV garbage but she wasn't.

Without overselling it-- it's worth a viewing. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:22 AM | Comments (91)
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Yup.

I'm sure that's the problem.

On the other hand, they had no problem airing the Romney Hidden Cam with the missing 2 (or 18?) minutes. David Corn is being evasive about this.

What was said there? Perhaps something that made his other remarks sound less abrasive -- context, as they call it -- and thus was edited out for maximum effect.

I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream Update: Unrelated, but awful.

So awful.

I'd totally let that guy babysit my kids!

A Meme Generator What Generates Memes: Via @bdomenech, you can make ha-has with Jim Messina and his creepy hunger for your children.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (235)
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The exchange begins around 4:40, and I suggest skipping to that, otherwise, I promise you will be sickened.

The interview begins with Letterman telling Obama how great he looks, asking how much he weighs (around 180), and talking about what a great, great lady Michelle is.

The section you could tolerate goes thus:

Obama responded with a recent history of government spending. Then Letterman went back to the tally: “Now, do you remember what that number was? Was it $10 trillion?”

Then came the payoff, as the president made clear that he really didn’t want to utter the word “16”: “I don’t remember what the number was precisely.”

In the exchange, Obama claims the whole deficit arose due to Bush ("two wars on a credit card," two tax cuts) and has nothing to do with him. He also claims he wants to cut government programs that "don't work," but oddly enough, he never says (not just here, but anywhere) what these programs are, and never proposes himself to cut them.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (168)
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So the bounce is all but gone.

And Obama might even be behind.

A point I would notice about this: While the race shows a stability that causes, I'm sure, heartburn on both sides, there can still be swings within a narrow bands of variance. There is still some 5-8% of the public which is making up its mind in some way, and we can see the big impact of that in these swings.

In swing states, 22% of voters say they could change their minds. That's a huge number, and it casts doubt on the "almost everyone's made up their minds" storyline.

I don't know if this is mostly True Independents actually swinging from Obama to Romney and back again; or if it's a Base Mobilization effect, such as disillusioned Democrats deciding, based on Clinton's speech, that instead of saying they're undecided they'll say they're supporting Obama.

Romney probably doesn't have a similar Base Mobilization effect. I figure it this way: If, at this point, you consider yourself "conservative" but are strongly inclined to give Obama a second term, you are not making political decisions as most people know them, but are playing some kind of "long game" which probably involves a revolution or general societal breakdown by 2015, so you're not likely to be swayed by a Romney or Ryan pitch that they can make things better. At this point, if you're "right"-leaning but still favor Obama, you probably see "making things better" as exactly what you don't want.

So the parts in motion seem to me to be Luntz's Dunces and another group of dunces, a group of Democrats which understands that Obama's actual record is horrible but if someone gives a nice speech or has a nice appearance on Letterman, well, that's good enough for them.

I don't have any secondary conclusions about this (like, what to do about it), but it is worth noting that despite the Conventional Wisdom that "almost everyone's mind is already made up," we can see the big impact of that small group of people still deciding shifting this way and that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:23 AM | Comments (246)
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