Peeps gettin' ready to jump ugly on Romney?

Although Republicans usually shy away from bare-knuckled exchanges in the early debates, there are indications that unspoken rule may be tossed out the window early this cycle.

On Fox News Sunday, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty lowered the boom on Romney by calling President Barack Obama’s controversial healthcare reforms “Obamneycare.”

“President Obama said that he designed Obamacare after Romneycare and basically made it Obamneycare,” Pawlenty said. “What I don’t understand is that they both continue to defend it.”

Romney will literally be the man in the middle -- CNN has used some arcane technique of basing position on the stage by NH polling data, and have put Romney dead in the middle, in everyone's sights, with candidates placed further from the middle based on current NH popularity. Why NH popularity? I don't know, because it's CNN.

On the outer perimeters will be Cain and Santorum. Oddly, Newt Gingrich, who is really no longer running for President but is rather creating a "decent interval" until his withdrawal, will be one of the two men closest to Romney.

Of course, left-wing propaganda organ CNN will be "moderating," or perhaps "lefterating," this "debate," which, as usual, is not a debate but a joint press conference with intermittent clapping, so the most important question is:

Will CNN's debate be total gayballz?

Jim Geraghty weighs in on this gayballz-or-not-gayballz issue. Based on past occasions of leftwing propaganda outlets lefterating Republican debates, the evidence predicts a high gayballz quotient.

Expect sixty bazillion questions about evolution, dinosaurs, abortion, and, of course, gay marriage. All of the wedge issues they have very similar answers on, tiny differences endlessly explored, to communicate to CNN's public "these people disagree with you on big things; don't vote for them."

They never do this with Democrats. There are a lot of weird, unpopular positions Democrats are required to hold; oddly enough, the networks are never all that keen to dwell on such issues.

Andy will be hosting a liveblog of the gayballz proceedings here.

One snag: I won't really be participating. I have a previous commitment, if you can imagine such a thing. If I can get my tech to work, I may be able to pop off irrelevant asides, which is the extent of my contributions in most cases anyhow.

Posted by: Ace at 12:46 PM | Comments (185)
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Refusing to disclose subpoenaed documents for Operation Fast and Furious and Project Gunrunner.

It's time to stop with the kid gloves.

You don't get to hide accountability in a democracy.

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (142)
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Justice delayed is justice denied.

“I wish I could tell you there was a quick fix to our economic problems. But the truth is, we didn’t get into this mess overnight, and we won’t get out of it overnight. It’s going to take time,” he said.

I wish I could tell you that no one warned you that Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's "stimulus" wasn't, but I can't. Everyone warned you.

Your response?

"I won."

Bonus: A couple of days of polling are not a trend, but those Rasmussen "Passion" Index figures are looking bad for Barry. [Thanks to ArthurK.]

Now I should be linking Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," the theme of Obama's life, but that version's actually cool.

Can I go lamer?

Sure can.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (178)
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You know why we had the American Revolution? Writs of assistance. Writs of assistance were a form of non-specific search warrant in colonial times that enabled officials working with the British Empire to search anything they wanted at any time. They had no expiration; they did not have to detail a location, and they did not have to describe the items being sought. Our forefathers blew a gasket over that and ran the English out of this country.

From Wikipedia:

In practice, customs writs of assistance served as general search warrants that did not expire, allowing customs officials to search anywhere for smuggled goods without having to obtain a specific warrant. These writs became controversial when they were issued by courts in British America in the 1760s, especially the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Controversy over these general writs of assistance inspired the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids general search warrants in the United States. In the United Kingdom, general writs of assistance continued to be issued until 1819.[6]

Well, the Fourth Amendment is under attack today, especially with all the newfangled spy toys in this digital age, and writs of assistance are back.

From the story linked at Drudge today, Dirty Bureaucrats Expand Their Search Authority:

Washington • The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents — allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The FBI soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

. . .

Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an "assessment." The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations "proactively" and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.

Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision.

(Emphasis mine.) Notice is says "criminal or terrorist activity"? Because we got to have the word "terrorist" in there. That way we can better fool the public!

Who is minding the store? Is the FBI so adverse to shoe leather investigation, they need to tell us, "Trust us; we're professionals, and we only want to look at anything we want to, and these new digital toys sure are convenient!"? We already have the legal fiction that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy with, say, your checking account, since bankers and people who work in end-clearing can look at it. Never mind the fact that no one expects a banker to actually identify you individually or your account activity as they monitor thousands of accounts and watch checks whiz by at the rate of 100 per second. Courts have allowed the distortion of "reasonable expectation of privacy" to the point it is almost meaningless.

And FBI agents. Trustworthy professionals, right? After all, they work for our nation's premier law enforcement organization. The fact is, they are people just like the people on your street or in your workplace. Most are decent, competent, ethical people, but every neighborhood and workplace has its Gladys Kravitz or George Constanza. People do dirty things for arbitrary and capricious reasons, and FBI agents are no different. They're just people too. Imagine the dirtiest schmuck you know going through your private things. They have some of those guys working at the FBI.

Years ago, my ex best friend married a particularly nasty person who got a job with the IRS. Guess how long it took for her to dig into all the friends' and neighbors' tax records. Guess how long it took for her to relay some of what she found to him, which eventually made its way back to me. Not long. Not long at all. And on this kind of thing, this skirting the rules, they sit back and chuckle to themselves, basking in the warmth of their power. (It's authority, not power, but they wouldn't know the difference.) With an ugly self-satisfaction, my friend told me about his wife's workplace, about how they would use work friends' computer terminals so that inappropriate searches could not be traced back to them.

The point is, FBI agents are bureaucrats too, no better or worse than this woman, and with the potential to do immeasurably greater snooping.

The Founding Fathers would not have put up with this for a second. The Fourth Amendment is not some annoying little hurdle, a trifle to be treated as a mere inconvenience to be gotten around while "us good guys on the inside nobly go about our duty." It's there for a reason.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 09:16 AM | Comments (239)
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Great idea...Obama has thrown American jobs under the bus.

A little long but that's a nit.

But don't worry you bumps, Green Jobs are coming. No wait, they aren't.

Nearly three years into Obama's presidency, the White House can't point to much solid evidence that significant numbers of Americans are scoring the green jobs the president has been touting.

Monthly Labor Department employment reports say nothing about the new clean energy workforce, while an effort to document how many Americans actually make a living in the "green collar" field may not be done by November 2012.

Obama's Council of Economic Advisers suggests 225,000 clean energy jobs were either created or preserved through the third quarter of 2010 thanks to more than $80 billion in the economic stimulus package. But those are estimates at best.

...The White House figures 825,000 Americans should be building electric car batteries, retrofitting homes or doing other green collar work by the end of 2012. But that too is an extrapolation.

"It's certainly a good thing if those numbers are believable," said Jerry Webman, chief economist at the Oppenheimer Funds. "But they're not a large enough number for the nation or Obama's job creation problem."

So the "green jobs" numbers are A-Made up, B-Massively underwritten by public money and C-Even if real not big enough to make a difference.

Obama '12: That's Not a Bus Rolling Over You, It's a Complimentary Back Massage!

Posted by: DrewM at 08:44 AM | Comments (153)
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A guy wrote, "You don't want to post this but you have to."

I'll just post three quotes, one for one side, two for the other.

For those who don't support Palin:

LetÂ’s face it, Palin made a great decision for her and her family, but one that disqualifies her from running for president, at least in 2012. Obama has the ultimate trump card against her: when things got tough you quit to become a rich celebrity while I was killing Osama bin Laden. Game, set, match.

The worst part about the resignation from a political narrative perspective is that it also stripped away Palin’s greatest strength. She is clearly a fighter but it is impossible to make “She will fight for you” the cornerstone of a campaign when she just quit her only big job, seemingly for personal gain.

What Palin and her many supporters apparently refuse to accept is that Palin is the Bo Jackson of modern Republican politics. She was a natural, but that talent has been taken away by circumstances beyond her control.

She once was a moderate conservative with the ability to appeal to Democrats and the charisma to energize Republicans. Not since Reagan has there been as gifted a politician as her and, because she is an attractive woman with a powerful personal story, you could easily argue she exceeded even the Gipper in overall political potential. I also believe her to be smarter than Reagan.

But like Jackson, she was cut down by “injury” in the prime of her career. The media-induced knee-capping during the 2008 election and its aftermath was grossly unfair, but it was also comprehensive and complete. Like Jackson after his freak hip injury, she still looked the same and could still plausibly play the game, but the magic was gone. It isn’t her fault and it is a travesty of justice, but to not recognize and accept that would be highly detrimental to the team. Jackson soon realized this; Palin apparently has not yet done so (or, potentially even worse, has, and just doesn’t care as much about the team as her brand).

And for those who do:

I defy anyone who buys into the conventional narrative that Sarah is stupid to listen to [Ziegler's Media Malpractice interview with Palin] and not change their mind. She was engaging, smart, honest, revealing, vulnerable, funny, and charismatic. When I showed her election footage that sheÂ’d never seen before and asked for her comments, she not once asked to pause the tape, and nailed every answer.

And, for purposes of Ziegler's motive (I know this is always in play)...

IÂ’ve fought so hard for Sarah, IÂ’m almost unemployable.

My position continues to be what it long has been. I do not think that the crucial 20% in the middle votes based on positions, and definitely doesn't vote based on strongly ideological positions.

A lot of people have strongly ideological positions. Millions. None of them -- or all but one of them -- will be president in 2012.

To win, you need not just to announce the right positions but announce you're the right person for the job. And to me, experience as governor is the ultimate evidence of that. As governor, you do a lot of things, in the course of your day-to-day job, that aren't really ideological, but simply managerial, making sure a large, sprawling enterprise functions properly (and, when ideological concerns arise, making sure it functions properly towards the right goals).

Without that kind of gig, someone with strong ideological opinions -- even if I agree with 95% of those positions -- is sort of just a talking head on TV. Like Sean Hannity. Good guy, sure I'd like him if I ever met him.

President Hannity? No.

On The Order of Things And Testable Hypotheses: I think the basic argument comes down to something rather simple: The order in which political moves ought to happen, and could happen, and an unsatisfied demand for proof that a cherished hypothesis is true.

Palin skeptics like me have long maintained the order of things should be thus:

Step 1. Palin demonstrates an ability to change opinions about her, and gain general credibility as a commander in chief.

Step 2. If an only if Step 1 is successfully fulfilled, we proceed to nominate her for our candidate for President of the United States of America.

Palin's strongest fans have a different conception of the order of things:

Step 1. We nominate Palin as our candidate for President of the Untied States of America.

Step 2. Now that we've given Palin our own "credibility," we see if she can leverage that into changing perceptions about her and gaining her own credibility to administer the highest office in the world.

Do Palin's fans understand the order of things I've suggested is a relatively low-risk play, while their preferred order is extraordinarily high-risk, as we would, if we followed their advice, go into the general election without knowing if it's actually possible for Palin to persuade any of the 64% who have already declared they will not support her under any circumstances?

Here's my grief and here's my beef: There is no reason that my suggested Step one could not, or should not, be the actual first step.

I think Palin's strongest supporters recoil from my suggestion that the natural and obvious Step One actually be Step One because they know that my Step One is the hardest step.

That their step one -- get the nomination -- is comparatively easy. And they want to do the easy thing first.

Well I don't. I don't want to go up against Obama with a candidate I am not confident about. I don't want to "take a chance" and "bet with my heart" or any of that other emotionalist hogwash.

I want the candidate I support to do this work of seeming credible, serious, and electable before I actually nominate him or her.

This is a variation of a simple proposition: Hypotheses should be tested and proven. It is the hypotheses of Palin's strongest supporters that of course she will be able to do this difficult work of changing longstanding perception.

To which I continue to ask: Then why isn't she doing that now? If this is easy, where is the evidence that the Plan is in motion and is bearing fruit?

The answer is always a variation of: She'll do that later. Later. Apparently mostly after we've already bet the nation on her purported capacity to accomplish a historically unprecedented feat.

You don't have to wait for the nomination to increase your gravitas, seriousness, and electability.

Tim Pawlenty is increasing his profile, and his conservative credibility, by announcing a series of controversial, but plausible, policy moves.

What is this bullshit I keep hearing about "Later"? About tomorrow? Always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

What is this, global warming? There is no reason the hypothesis, if true, cannot be proved right damn now.

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (698)
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Obama and the Democrats continue to push high-speed rail on people that do not want it and do not need it. Over the weekend, Michael Barone spotted yet another of these pointless proposals.

Apparently, the Department of Transportation wants Iowa to help pay for a high-speed rail line from Iowa City to Chicago. The proposed line would average 45 miles per hour and complete the journey in about five hours.

Oh, one other thing. Cox reports that there is already luxury bus service, with plugs for laptops and wireless Internet, from Iowa City to Chicago. It’s part of a larger trend for private companies to offer convenient and inexpensive bus service. A one-way ticket on the bus costs $18, compared to a likely train fare of more than $50. And the bus takes only three hours and 50 minutes to get from Iowa City to Chicago. That’s one hour and 10 minutes faster than the “high-speed” train.

The bus will require less capital investment and actually turn a profit, compared to a high-speed train, which, if it goes like all other train projects have, will cost millions more than projected and never turn a profit.

Don't expect this to alter the technocratic train fantasy on the Left.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:22 AM | Comments (362)
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Goodwill and artillery will get you more than goodwill alone.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (145)
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Take Miami in 6 games, 4-2.

So there.

(actually I'm reminiscing like, 22 years ago or something like that, over the Lakers Western conference finals. Damn, that was a fight.)

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:51 PM | Comments (81)
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How To Not Appear Crazy on the Internet

Here Frank Fleming of Imao.us give some very helpful hints on how to not give away that you're teh Crazee when conversing on the internet. Well at least not immediately.

And lots of people scan like this, because crazy people have this habit of self-identifying on the internet that allows sane people to skip over what they have to say before even getting to the crazy point. Thus crazy people never even get heard.

...But on the internet, crazy people can put their opinions right next to those of sane people. If they can just use a little self-discipline to not immediately identify themselves as cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, they might actually get their ideas read.

Of course one problem is that crazy people almost never realize they're crazy. And when you are crazy, it turns out that it's really, really hard to just act normal. Still for all you non-crazee types if you recognize any of these signs in your own commenting style, well you might want to make some adjustments. Even if the voices say not to.

CAPS LOCK IS YOUR ENEMY

There are basically two kinds of people who type entire comments with Caps Lock on: stupid people and crazy people. And no one wants to read what either has to say.

You can and should read all the rest here.

So if you've ever wondered why even the other morons shun your comments or why those girls on Match.com are always so quick with the restraining orders, well teh fault might JUST B with ur writing STYLE!!! AND HITL3R!

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:25 PM | Comments (698)
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