This has been on the Lefty blogs today, but you know what? They're right to ridicule.

Here's a photo of Pat Buchanan at his annual conference (Buchanan is looking away from the camera). One of his suggestions for rebuilding a Republican majority are English-only initiatives which he expects appeal to the middle class. Look closely:

Audio of Buchanan at the conference mocking Judge Sotomayor for reading children's books to learn English is here. Wait, so does he want Spanish speakers to learn English or what?

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At the White House today, two top members of Obama's stimulus message team explained Obama's plan of "money momentum." Skip to 1:30 for the good parts of his plan.

But seriously.

Attention workers: If you're getting federal stimulus money, stand up and prepare to be counted. And no cheating.

The Obama administration issued its long-awaited rules for tallying jobs Monday and warned that local politicians trying to inflate their numbers would surely be caught.

As part of the $787 billion stimulus law, governors, mayors and contractors must begin reporting job numbers to the federal government in October. The data collected could provide the most accurate count of workers employed by stimulus money, a number that is expected to be far more precise than the murky and unverifiable promise that 3.5 million jobs will be created by the end of next year.

But for months, there has been confusion over what the rules would be. What's a created job? A saved job? Could a construction worker be counted twice if he worked two part-time contracts? On highway jobs, do you count just the laborers, or also the extra wait staff at the nearby lunch spot?

Under the rules released Monday, the White House told governors, mayors and contractors to keep it simple.

"Just count the people being paid out of Recovery Act dollars," said Rob Nabors, deputy director at the White House budget office.

To avoid double-counting, a job means a full-time, full-year job. So a student working a 9-to-5 job for his three-month summer vacation will be counted as one-fourth of a job. The part-time teacher who works all year is half a job. And the full-time highway contractor who works all year is one job.

Um, if a company employing 500 people takes enough stimulus money to pay 10 employees out of those sums, that doesn't mean any jobs have been "saved or created." That only means they now have "free money" and are paying a few employees with that free money. It doesn't mean a job was created -- the job already existed -- and doesn't mean it was "saved," either, because there's no evidence the company would have eliminated the position but for the money, either.

Further, much of this money is pure pork directed towards specific tasks. If a company takes "stimulus" money to build a dog park, that doesn't mean the money taken has "saved or created" any jobs at all. You can't assume, for example, the company simply wouldn't have been doing other jobs, real jobs paid for by private citizens and companies because they actually need those jobs done.

But Obama is going to simply claim, in effect, that every $40 or $50,000 of stimulus paid out "saves or creates" one job, because that's ballpark average salary. A pork project costs $40,000,000? Wonderful! That means that 1000 jobs were saved or created! Obviously, Obama's dollars must translate 1:1 into the salaries of "saved or created" jobs.

Now that's "Money Momentum!" Folks, we just saved or created 1000 jobs. Give yourselves all a hand.

These utterly fake numbers, with their ludicrously self-serving assumptions, can be "figured" out simply by dividing Obama's stimulus figure of $787 billion and dividing it by the average salary. But it would be too transparent if Obama just did that. So he goes by the slightly more circuitous route of "counting" the same number, relying on the beneficieries of his our largesse to report these same idiotic figures back to him. Took $400,000? Obviously then ten workers are being paid by the stimulus, and that's 10 more jobs "saved or created," and you'd better not say otherwise if you want federal money to keep flowing.

It's insultingly stupid and dishonest, and of course the press will claim -- as they already are claiming -- that this is "much more accurate" than Obama's previous guestimates, which the press, by the way, didn't really inform us were inaccurate to start with.

Let Me Explain... Again, it made perfect sense in my head, but I didn't express it well in writing.

Suppose Obama simply released his own "figures," which assumed a 1 for 1 translation of stimulus spending into salaries of jobs "saved or created." That is, he assumes each and every dollar he spends in stimulus is a dollar that pays a "saved or created" job's salary. Get to $40,000 or so, and you have "saved or created" an entire job.

Now: Everyone would laugh at the ludicrous assumptions in this "calculation."

So he avoids doing that... directly. Instead, he asks those who are receiving stimulus money to report back to him how many jobs are "saved or created" with the spending.

Except that's not what he asks-- that would still leave a lot of subjectivity and guesswork as to which jobs really were "saved or created." He doesn't want that.

So what he asks is for the people receiving the money to just tell him how many people's salaries are now being "paid" by the stimulus -- but instructs them to count these "saved or created" jobs precisely the same way he can't do himself, because it would be so obviously self-serving and based upon silly assumptions.

He can't himself make the absurd claim that "stimulus" money saves or creates jobs on a one dollar in, one dollar out basis. Or anything close to that. He'd be laughed out of DC.

But the "accounting rules" he's given to companies taking the money insist on precisely that -- that anyone taking money report back to him that each dollar they receive pays a "saved or created" job salary.

The advantage to Obama? He can pretend these numbers are "objective" and "vetted" by "independent" sources. So they must be accurate.

Not so: Garbage in, garbage out. He's instructed them to assume all the ludicrous nonsense he himself can't assume in "counting," so he's essentially demanding they parrot back his risible "numbers" to him. He's given them the exact mathematical "rules" they must follow in "counting," and they will wind up being 1:1, more or less, of stimulus dollar spent and dollar received in a "saved or created" job.

This is the accounting or statistical equivalent of money laundering -- concealing the source by laundering it through a front. Obama's "accounting rules" force a ridiculous result, but these results won't come from Obama himself, supposedly, but instead from the front-companies he demands "launder" his silly math back to him.

Obama can't claim 2+2 = 5. So instead he instructs those taking money to perform calculations by the ObamaMath of 2 + 2 = 5. Then these companies dutifully report back 2 + 2 = 5.

Obama then shows off his handiwork to the press and thereby to the public. See? 2 + 2 = 5. I'm not the one telling you so; I have all of these independent companies, who wouldn't lie about such things, telling you so! It's confirmed by outside authority!

And so, 2 + 2 does wind up being equal to 5, at least in ObamaLand.

Thanks to WilliamA.

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Hot Dog Diplomacy. Catch the fever.

he United States said Monday its invitations were still standing for Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 celebrations at US embassies despite the crackdown on opposition supporters.

President Barack Obama's administration said earlier this month it would invite Iran to US embassy barbecues for the national holiday for the first time since the two nations severed relations following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"There's no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

Well. Won't that make a pretty photo-op.

Oh, wait: Obama, Mr. Transparency, will not permit photos.

We used to goof that Obama would send "strongly worded letters" or employ diplomatic snubbings in dealing with the world's worst monsters.

Turns out we gave him far too much credit. He won't even do that.

Thanks to EricR.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Add Comment
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Recharging his batteries for a fight over stimulus money in the state legislature, they say.

But. The guy's wife didn't know where he was and he didn't answer calls. Whatever the real story is, any aspirations he might have had for higher office are over. You can't elect a president who mysteriously disappears for four days. It's flakey.

The whereabouts of Gov. Mark Sanford was unknown for nearly four days, and some state leaders question who was in charge of the executive office.

But SanfordÂ’s office told the lieutenant governorÂ’s office Monday afternoon that Sanford has been reached and he is fine, said Frank Adams, head of Lt. Gov. Andre BauerÂ’s office on aging.

Neither the governorÂ’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford after he left the mansion Thursday in a black SLED Suburban SUV, said Sen. Jake Knotts and three others familiar with the situation but declined to be identified.

SanfordÂ’s last known whereabouts had been near Atlanta because a mobile telephone tower picked up a signal from his phone, authorities said. His office now knows where he is, Adams said.

His office knows, but they're not sharing that with the public. And Sanford isn't appearing on tv or something to reassure constituents.

First lady Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press earlier Monday her husband has been gone for several days and she did not know where.
She said she was not concerned.

The governorÂ’s state and personal phones had been turned off and he had not responded to phone or text messages since at least the weekend, a source familiar with the situation said.

Most mobile phones cannot be tracked if they are turned off.

Jenny Sanford said the governor said he needed time away from their children to write something.

Weird. It's not really normal for anyone to disappear for four days. Understandable in some cases, maybe, but not normal. It's not acceptable for the chief executive of a state to disappear himself like this.

I don't know what the hell he was doing, but the move is so odd I suspect his reasons wouldn't reflect well on him.

Thanks to JennyC.

Overblown? Robert Paulsen writes this isn't necessarily a big deal, and that the AP reporter might be making a mountain over a molehill, for partisan reasons.

It's possible he's right. It's possible that the Governor's top aides knew exactly where he was and could get in touch with him with a secret cell phone at any time. It's possible the guy just said "I need to fish for a few days, don't call unless it's important," and the AP wrote the story up as an Unsolved Mystery hosted by Robert Stack.

That's all possible, I guess. Still, it's odd that the man's wife didn't know where he was. She said she was unconcerned, but... just seems odd. Spouses usually aren't allowed to keep their locations secret from each other, especially not for four or five days running.

Posted by: Ace at 11:30 AM | Comments (2)
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Via Twitter.

They've been discussing this possibility on FoxNews. One pundit stated that general strikes were critical to the success of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and that such a strike would definitely have an impact. Particularly if those working in the oil sector join the strike.

The Revolutionary Guard is threatening to crush further demonstrations, meanwhile.

Anyone who doesn't show up for work is fired, the regime barks.

And an unconfirmed tidbit:

According to unconfirmed reports in Balatarin [Farsi] , Gen. Ali Fazli, the head of revolutionary guards in Tehran, has been arrested after refusing to execute KhameneiÂ’s order of using force against demonstrators in Tehran. He is a war veteran who lost an eye during the Iran-Iraq war.

The turning point in an uprising comes when many the regime relies upon begin fence-sitting, waiting for a victor to emerge. This particular report may not be true, and other similar reports may not be true, but, assuming some of them are true, it looks like more and more power-players are deciding it's unclear who will prevail in this. Which is deadly for the regime, of course, because 80% of their power derives from the belief that they are powerful and are in a position to punish those who defy them.

The Last Piece of the Puzzle? ParanoidGirlInSeattle wrote in the comments earlier that Iranian friends of hers doubted this counter-revolution would succeed, because general protests, especially when made up mostly of students, don't change anything. The situation would turn serious, she said (based on her friends' understanding) when businesses and workers took up the cause.

She now writes:

And I've posted this two or three times in various comments threads about Iran as a woman I know from Iran told me last week this is what was needed, the support of the business owners and the infrastructure people (transportation, garbage etc.), it's how what is going on now continues to gain momentum there. It's their real hope for change at this point.

Full-On Coup? A huge rumor picked up by Patterico, found in Al Arabiya.

Religious leaders are considering an alternative to the supreme leader structure after at least 13 people were killed in the latest unrest to shake Tehran and family members of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were arrested amid calls by former President Mohammad Khatami for the release of all protesters.

Iran's religious clerics in Qom and members of the Assembly of Experts, headed by Ayatollah Rafsanjani, are mulling the formation of an alternative collective leadership to replace that of the supreme leader, sources in Qom told Al Arabiya on condition of anonymity.

It gets even more interesting. Al-Sistani of Iraq is said to have had a representative present at the meeting where this was discussed. I'll leave that quote at Patterico, which explains why al-Sistani might be invited.

Yes, Al-Sistani. The guy who has frustrated us by seeming to be on the side of the good guys a lot of the time in Iraq, and yet would not put himself too much out on a ledge for them. (I think he constantly vetoed any plan to outlaw al-Sadr, for example, but my memory is fuzzy.)

It would be interesting -- and politically useful to supporters of the war in Iraq -- if Bush's noble and bloody experiment in Iraq turns out to contain the chickens which will go home to roost in Iran.

That was always pretty much Bush's real plan in Iraq -- not just that we'd win a war in a single country, but that a successful, prosperous, free Iraq would have positive spillover effects throughout the Muslim world.

Obviously I'm getting far ahead of the information here, so I'll stop.

Thanks to someone.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Add Comment
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And... he Twittered the incident. Sounds very very whiny.

"I was assaulted by Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas and his security guards. I am bleeding. Please, I need to file a police report. No joke."

"Still waiting for the police. The bleeding has stopped. I need to document this. Please, can the police come to the SoHo Met Hotel."

"I spoke to my lawyer. I really need to talk to the authorities. Please come to the SoHo Met Hotel. Have called the police. Need them here."

"The Toronto police are here now. Thank you. Please stop calling them."

"I am out of TP. Please call the police. My bum is dirty and I need to wipe it."

I may have added that last one.

Why on earth does he need readers to call the police? He doesn't. Obviously he has access to a phone.

So this is a publicity stunt -- not the punch, necessarily, but the "please call the police for me I need to whine to everyone on Twitter" part of it.

After the initial claims that Will.I.Am punched Hilton, Will.I.Am clarified that actually his manager "Polo" had hit him. And Perez Hilton agreed. I guess he initially claimed it was Will.I.Am. because he's more famous.

Will.I.Am says he and Hilton exchanged words. "So I go up to him and say, 'Hey, can you do me a favor, Perez?... Can you not be so blatantly rude to our group [the Black Eyed Peas] your website? That's just wrong - you don't have to be disrespectful,'" Will.I.Am said in his video statement. "He said, 'I don't respect you.' I was like, 'What? Ok, if you don't respect me that's cool.'

Will.I.Am then says Perez called him "a f**got" at which point "the fans get all crazy and start on Perez Hilton. I'm just sitting there minding my own business waiting for a car."

However, the entertainment website TMZ reported that the general manager of the Black Eyed Peas -- Polo Molina -- had turned himself in to Toronto police early Monday morning. Hilton corroborated this in his own video release Monday morning, saying that The Black Eyed Peas' manager "Polo clocked me right here [motioning to his black eye], and punched me two or three times."

An extremely emotional Hilton also addressed Will.I.am's video statement, saying "You know very well, and I know very well, and God knows that it was not a random fan that hit me."

Hilton did admit calling Will.I.Am a "f**got," saying it was the worse thing he could think of to call the singer at the time. He went further in his video statement, calling the singer "a f***ing coward," and adding he would have had more respect if he would have punched him in the face himself.

Yeah, me too. We have one pussy who has his manager punch people on his behalf and another sissy who insults a guy and calls him a "faggot" and then whines that he's gotten punched for it.

Thanks to Lord Raiden.

Update from Gabe: I just want to underline something. Whiny cockholster Perez Hilton tried to think of the worst thing to call Will.I.Am and he came up with "faggot." What. A. Fucking. Idiot.

Also, where can I send Molina a thank-you note on behalf of gay people everywhere?

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Add Comment
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39% is about the size of the conservative and conservative-leaning segment of the electorate, so this means the conservatives and leaners have soured on Obama. Perhaps not surprising, but it is nevertheless good news. Maybe we haven't made enough headway with true moderates/mush-heads yet, but at least we finally have everyone on the team back on the team.

The mush-heads aren't going to be terribly difficult to flip, either. They are pretty non-ideological, so our ideological arguments won't work on them. But Obama's ideological arguments won't work on them either. Their sympathies turn on simple circumstance -- what is the current economic health of the nation? -- and with unemployment projected to remain high, they'll be increasingly unimpressed by Obama's pecs and "first-rate temperament."

Despite signs that the recession gripping the nation's economy may be easing, the unemployment rate is projected to continue rising for another year before topping out in double digits, a prospect that threatens to slow growth, increase poverty and further complicate the Obama administration's message of optimism about the economic outlook.

The likelihood of severe unemployment extending into the 2010 midterm elections and beyond poses a significant political hurdle to President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are already under fire for what critics label profligate spending. Continuing high unemployment rates would undercut the fundamental argument behind much of that spending: the promise that it will create new jobs and improve the prospects of working Americans, which Obama has called the ultimate measure of a healthy economy.

"Our hope would be to actually create some jobs this year," Obama said in an interview with The Washington Post in the days before taking office.

For those following Rasmussen's "Presidential Approval Index," it turned negative for the first time over the weekend at -2, and now stands at minus one. Once again I don't put much stock in it, because the measure is new and sort of gimmicky and I don't have any feel for what the historic average of the rating is.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Oh: And 43% want ObamaCare to go forward, now.

The percentage of people who think (at the very least) it should be put on hold until the economy improves? 44%.

Politico: I wonder when David Axelrod will shout them into changing their headline.

Eroding confidence in President Barack ObamaÂ’s handling of the economy and ability to control spending have caused his approval ratings to wilt to their lowest levels since taking office, according to a spate of recent polls, a sign of political weakness that comes just as he most needs leverage on Capitol Hill.

The good news for Obama is that his approval ratings — 57 percent in a Gallup tracking poll over the weekend — remain comfortably high by historical standards for presidents.

But the trend lines among a variety of polls over the past several days are unmistakable: Independents and even some Republicans who once viewed him sympathetically are becoming skeptical, and many people of all stripes are anxious about economic and fiscal trends.

ObamaÂ’s approval rating has dipped below 60 percent on other occasions according to Gallup, but while those slumps lasted only a day, this one appears to be more persistent.

...

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said the Obama administration should look at the results of the center's recent poll and others “as a warning sign” but added that the new numbers were “not an indication of a loss of fundamental political support.”

“The real driver is not the president’s personal popularity,” which remains robust, Kohut said, “but faith in him to deal with the nation’s number one problem” — i.e, the economy.

"Unsustainable," a pundit recently called the divergence in Obama's personal support and the lower support for his actual policies. Eventually the two will come into sync, and it won't be at the higher level of personal approval Obama currently enjoys.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Add Comment
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Andy McCarthy pokes around in Obama's psychology, and comes out with an unflattering portrait.

The key to understanding Obama, on Iran as on other matters, is that he is a power-politician of the hard Left : He is steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment over what he chooses to see in America's history, but a "pragmatist" in the sense that where ideology and power collide (as they are apt to do when your ideology becomes less popular the more people understand it), Obama will always give ground on ideology (as little as circumstances allow) in order to maintain his grip on power.

It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama's instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters. As this position became increasingly untenable politically, and as Democrats became nervous that his silence would become a winning political round for Republicans, he was moved grudgingly to burble a mild censure of the mullah's "unjust" repression — on the order of describing a maiming as a regrettable "assault," though enough for the Obamedia to give him cover. But expect him to remain restrained and to continue grossly understating the Iranian regime's deadly response. That will change only if, unexpectedly, it appears that the freedom-fighters may win, at which point he'll scoot over to the right side of history and take all conceivable credit.

I think Victor had this right on Saturday: "Obama is almost more at ease with virulent anti-Westerners, whose grievances Obama has long studied (and perhaps in large part entertained)," (though I'd have omitted the "almost"). Mark Steyn made the same point in a post last week (about a Robert Kagan column that Pete Wehner also discussed).

It's a mistake to perceive this as "weakness" in Obama. It would have been weakness for him to flit over to the freedom fighters' side the minute it seemed politically expedient. He hasn't done that, and he won't. Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely. That's not weakness, it's strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.

He did something very similar when Russia invaded Georgia, burbling some nonsense about both sides needing to stop the violence. When a cautious statement of support for a democratic country would have actually gained him a bit politically. As well as, you know, being the right thing to do.

Only when his friendly-to-invaders statement was criticized by McCain did he manage to say something nice about freedom and sovereignty and so forth.

Thanks to DrewM.

Michael Barrone on Obama: Dodge Facts, Skip the Details, Govern Chicago-Style: Sounds about right. Here's the bit about dodging facts:

First, Obama likes to execute long-range strategies but suffers from cognitive dissonance when new facts render them inappropriate. His 2008 campaign was a largely flawless execution of a smart strategy, but he was flummoxed momentarily when the Russians invaded Georgia and when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. On domestic policy, he has been executing his long-range strategy of vastly expanding government, but may be encountering problems as voters show unease at huge increases on spending.
His long-range strategy of propitiating America’s enemies has been undercut by North Korea’s missile launches and demonstrations in Iran against the mullah regime’s apparent election fraud. His assumption that friendly words could melt the hearts of Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been refuted by events. He limits himself to expressing “deep concern” about the election in the almost surely vain hope of persuading the mullahs to abandon their drive for nuclear weapons, while he misses his chance to encourage the one result — regime change — that could protect us and our allies from Iranian attack.

Posted by: Ace at 10:01 AM | Add Comment
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More details are emerging about the 26 year old young woman whose cold blooded murder was captured on video and quickly became the face of the Second Iranian Revolution.

The BBC Persia (via HufPo, it's worth the click) has an interview with Neda's fiance. Needless to say, it's well worth the read. (scroll down to 1:03pm update for full interview)

Kasamin Makan, Neda Agha-Setan's fiancee, was interviewed by BBC Persia, noting that Neda would have turned 27 this year. "Neda's goal was not Mousavi or Ahmadinejad, it was her country and was important for her to fight for this goal. She had said many times that if she had lost her life or been shot in the heart, which indeed what happened, it was important for her to continue in this path," he said.

..."It seems that Mr. Mousavi's supporters are trying to portray Neda as one of his supporters. This is not so. Neda was incredibly close to me and she was never supportive of either two groups. Neda wanted freedom and freedom for all."

The regime outlawed any memorials for Neda but that didn't stop protesters from gathering. Of course, the thugs attacked.

"comatus" from the comments

I finally looked at her picture, and she looked familiar somehow. I think we have a statue of her in the harbor at New York. Delacroix caught a glimpse of her once on a barricade in Paris. She carried water to the cannon crews at Monmouth, and drove a chariot at Watling Street. She cut off Holophernes' head.

She will be missed, but she will be back. She's that kind of girl.

What Neda's death means to different generations in Iran. It's a Daily Beast link via Allah but worth the read.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:48 AM | Comments (1)
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Following up on Obama's "campaigny" push back on Iran, Obama reached back in his bag of tricks to rally the troops on health care reform.

Facing mounting doubts about health care reform proposals as they become reality – “To be candid with you, I don’t know that he has the votes right now,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said on CNN Sunday, “I think there’s a lot of concern in the Democratic caucus” – President Obama today tried to rekindle some of campaign enthusiasm that swept him into office last November.

Addressing those “here in Washington who've grown accustomed to sky-is-falling prognoses and the certainties that we cannot get this done, I have to repeat and revive an old saying we had from the campaign: ‘Yes, we can,’” the President said Monday morning. “We are going to get this done.”

Things must be really looking bleak on the government take over front given the NY Times' need to dive even further in the tank for Obama than previously thought possible.

Over the weekend they came out with a poll saying everyone!!!11!! (well, 78% of Americans) supports "substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals"

That assumes you define "Americans" as people who voted for Obama since the NY Times poll substantially oversampled self-identified Obama voters.

"Obama Voters Support Obama Policy" isn't really that catchy of a headline compared to what (NewsBusters link) they actually ran..."In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health"

So, allow me to sum up...

Health care nationalization? Yes We Can

Grab some ice cream while Tehran burns? Yes We Can

Say something supportive of Iranian protesters? No He Won't

Posted by: DrewM at 08:15 AM | Add Comment
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