Via LauraW., Ramesh Ponnuru smells that stale sweat stink of the 1am gambler who's lost everything except his wedding ring and wants to hit a pawn shop before placing one last big bet on the 4th quarter of the Hawaii game.

Shrum's column is more of the same It's In The Bag stuff, and one wonders who he's trying to convince, the reader, or himself.

He maybe doesn't have the proper physical perspective on things:

Even from NYUÂ’s campus in Florence, Italy, I could feel the gears of political prognosis shifting back home.

Really! You don't say!

NYU's summer-school European Vacation campus in Florence, Italy?

That sounds perfectly lovely! Sounds like you've got a pretty good sense of the pulse of the American heartland!

Anyway, that's not where he gets his Obama-Will-Win jazz from; rather, he compares Obama to, giggle, Reagan.

The past doesnÂ’t repeat itself, but to the extent that it hints at rather than reveals the future, the relevant signs suggest that Barack Obama is in a more advantageous position than Ronald Reagan was. In GallupÂ’s June 1983 numbers, ReaganÂ’s approval was 43 percent; in late May and early June, Obama was five to eight points higher.

One can look at Reagan's not-so-good poll numbers at this point in his presidency.

Or, one can look at the factors underlying those poll numbers -- and how they were, based upon the underlying factors about to completely change, about to change themselves.

Reviewing:

Reagan only posted a 2.60% quarterly growth rate in his ninth quarter. (Chart here, 1st quarter of 1983 if I'm counting right. Not so good; 2.60% is barely keeping pace with the rate of expansion of population and won't add new jobs. It'll only keep jobs from being freshly lost.

But the next quarter-- his tenth -- he posted a 10.9% quarterly GDP growth rate. And that will add new jobs. Oh, it won't be repeated -- that burst of explosive growth is just a one-off thing in recovery-- but succeeding quarters will be at 5%+ and then drop to a nice 3.5% average. A sustained rate of growth that will create new jobs.

In Reagan's case, it was repeated, almost, for a year: In successive quarters the economy grew like gangbusters at 6.5%, 7%, 7.4%, and 5%. Now that is a recovery.

So, point is, at this point in Clinton's term the help of a hiring boom was already on its way and in fact was late -- took a while for people to start hiring. But on the way it was.

At this point in Reagan's term the economy had shifted from negative to slightly positive at 2.60%, but the next quarter was a jolt that woke everyone out of their Carter-years torpor.

So help was definitely on the way there.

But Obama?

Yeah, unless Obama is about to post a 10.9% quarterly growth rate this current quarter, I don't think Obama is about to experience the sudden surge in popularity that Reagan did.

The public's attitude reflected in these polling numbers was based on something, Shrum. You're not so dumb that you don't know that.

Reagan's low-ish number in this quarter of his presidency was based on a very deep recession only recently ending, and ending in just the previous quarter.

However, his reelection numbers were based on the most furious rate of growth in the postwar era.

Unless you know somethin' about a surging V-shaped recovery in the next two or three quarters, I'd drop this whole "But Reagan was only at 43%" jazz.

You're just misleading your readers. True, they wish to be misled; they love the cocoon.

But what people want isn't always what's best for them.

Reagan's Unemployment Line Vs. Obama's: This blogger has to use some forecasting to project the unemployment rate going forward in Obama's term, but I think his forecasts are fair and even generous, because few people are talking up a sub-8% unemployment rate.

Most liberals are in fact saying that if he gets it down to 8% -- eight percent! A very high rate! -- then he should be fine.

So I take 8% as sort of the under/over.

Point is, Obama will almost certainly not have Reagan-like GDP growth anytime soon, and he almost beyond a doubt bank-it-and-crank-it (I don't know what that means either, but it sounds like an expression) not have a 7.2% and falling-fast rate of unemployment, either.

Yes, Reagan did go into the election of 84 with a 7.2% rate of unemployment. Yes, that is quite high.

But the trend was obvious here. So obvious he won 49 states. Successive quarters of huge GDP growth will be followed by a serious surge in hiring. Before the election, the unemployment figure was falling sharply, and people believed -- for good reason -- the trend would continue.

There is no data to support the idea that the public has that understanding now.

In fact, there's data against that, with 48% believing we've got Depression 2.0 coming this year.

I suppose that actually helps Obama -- lowered expectations have long been his longtime companion and unconquerable ally.

But based on the current economic figures, it looks like Obama will merely match, and not exceed, the meager expectations people have for him.

No one can predict the future, except of course the psychic who correctly divined the Texas Murder Lawn.

If Obama's got 'round-10% GDP growth comin' round the bend, then yes, he's a shoo-in for reelection.

If not, then probably not.

I don't know. I don't know anything. I just think it does not look good.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (209)
Post contains 973 words, total size 6 kb.

Are we diverting ourselves with frivolities, as Anthony Weiner might say?

You know what? Honestly, I can cop to that without guilt.

This is bad. What people think of as bad now? Will not look as bad in nine months.

"My gut feeling is we might see a continuation of the decline (in home prices)," Shiller said.

He added that a 10 to 25 percent slump in real home prices "wouldn't surprise me at all," though he cautioned that was not a forecast.

..

Another uptick in the unemployment rate might also start to point to a double-dip recession, he said.

As a commenter noted (and others have noted, including me), Obama shot all the rounds from the Fiscal Policy gun on noted economists Harry Reid, Ph.D., and Dr. Nancy Pelosi's non-stimulus plan.

So the fiscal shot-in-the-arm is now impossible. At this point spending more would make the economy crash harder, as it all but signals we're Goin' Greek.

On the monetary side... what's left there? Anything? We can't buy our own T-Bills with printed-up dollars forever.

So cometh the Depression 2.0 with no cushion.

If this happens -- and it's my gut hunch that it will -- Obama might not even seek the nomination in 2012, but we will take little comfort in that, because this is going to be an absolute disaster.

Unexpectedly: Jobless claims rise again.

This is a very "unprecedented" sort of "recovery."

Thanks to Jammie Wearing Fool, on Twitter.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 AM | Comments (377)
Post contains 276 words, total size 2 kb.

"Capes and tights and shit."

I have previously made the case as to why this would be strongly suggestive evidence of inappropriate private familiarity. Skip down to my "Guess" part for that.

Does this prove the girls did anything wrong? No.

Does this prove Weiner said anything truly untoward? No.

But I refresh the question I asked at the end of the last post:

What in the Holy Hell is Weiner doing having friendly, familiar, private discussions with teenaged schoolgirls in the first place?

Can anyone postulate any likely scenario in which Weiner has a perfectly innocent intent here and yet has to take this crap private?

Tights? Why are you talking about
tights with an underage girl?
What did you think was going to happen here?

Posted by: Ace at 07:18 AM | Comments (306)
Post contains 159 words, total size 1 kb.

Just a tease.

Does he have the goods? I don't know, but 1, he's careful, and 2, he's usually not a big smack-talker, and 3, right now, he's cocky as all hell.

He says his evidence has something to do with this transcript of chats with Sleepless in Las Vegas.

As he's referencing a transcript with someone else, I can only surmise his evidence is of the inferential variety, rather than the direct or conclusive type.

Reliable Sources? A good question that I've been @-ing Howard Kurtz about.

When Howard Kurtz announced, dismissively, to all the "twerps" who were asking why he wasn't covering the Weiner matter, that the evidence appeared "faked," where did he get this idea?

It appears that he got that idea from the Daily Kos. Wait, did I say the Daily Kos? No, Kos actually exercises some editorial control over the Daily Kos.

Howard Kurtz appears to have gotten it from a Daily Kos Diarist. You know, one of those people who frequently posts embarrassing anti-Semetic, assassination-porn, or Truther crap. The stuff that Kos routinely dismisses as stuff that shouldn't be held against him, as he could not possibly monitor all the thousands of people he allows to post on his site to put advertising money into his pocket.

That's where Kurtz appears to have gotten this. That's what the evidence suggests.

Did he?

I don't know, because I, and others, keep asking him, but he refuses to answer us "twerps."

It would be interesting to know, wouldn't it?, that the media, which always sonorously pronounces upon its own "news judgment," includes as part of its texture of background information crap they read on their blog-faves HuffPo, FireDogLake, and of course, Daily Kos "Diaries."

Wouldn't it? Shouldn't the public know that, among the other inputs into this vaunted "news judgment" I hear so terribly much about, journalists' worldviews are shaped by a stead diet of political pornography they read on left-of-the-left hyperpartisan "Internet Detective" blogs?

I've asked Kurtz. So have others. So again I must say:

Comment was sought from Howard Kurtz, but he did not respond before the time of this article's publication.

My Guess: Patterico drops the baiting line:

It will become relevant when Part 2 comes along.

This, I promise you. Because we superheroes . . . thatÂ’s just how we roll.

In the transcript with Sleepless in Las Vegas, Weiner says, about his efforts to destroy the Tea Party before the 2010 elections (well done, Champ):

[Sleepless in Las Vegas:] hi honey! computer's back upÂ…what's up with you? busy saving my country rom this f***in
tea baggers?

[Super Weiner:] Yep. Cape. Tights. Looking for my sidekick

So what's my guess? My guess is that one of the underage girls remarked upon Weiner having a cape and tights, or being a sidekick, or being Robin, or some other superhero reference, which indicates:

1. He was lying when he said he had no contact with them apart from a "Hey thanks for following see AnthonyWeiner.com."

2. His PR team would in this case have gotten to the girls and gotten them, and their parents, to put out a statement that concealed the fact that Weiner was in fact engaging in personal -- not necessarily sexual, but personal, friendly, and familiar -- conversations with girls way too young to be DMing privately at all, whether about politics or Justin Bieber or whatever the hell one talks to girls young enough to be your daughters' younger cousins about.

That's my guess.

If this guess is right, then Patterico's evidence is inferential (as I already surmised), but suggestive. We would know, if this were true, that the cover story offered to us is false.

What lies behind the cover story? We wouldn't know that, yet. But we'd know the cover story was false.

For legal purposes -- and also because it's true -- I have to remind people again that this is a guess based upon what I see in Patterico's post, and the transcript he references.

Clarification: My cutesy nicknaming (partly just to not publicize the names of these collateral damage victims) is causing confusion.

"Sleepless in Las Vegas" refers to the 40-year-old (or roundabouts) Blackjack Dealer. I won't say her name; it's out there enough. This transcript presented here is not with an underage girl, but a full adult.

It is my guess, though, that Patterico has found the underage girls dropping superhero references in regard to him, suggesting he was so taken with this Superhero conceit he shared it with some of his other Frivolous Friends, in private DMs, of course.

As I say, there's nothing criminal or blameworthy in dropping superhero references. However, that would seem to indicate that Weiner's conversations with them were not, in fact, arms-length or automated "Thank you please see AnthonyWeiner.com," but actual conversations.

And what the hell is a 46 year old man doing speaking privately to a 16 year old girl? What the hell could they possibly have to talk about?

The thing itself is wildly inappropriate, even if we assumed that nothing beyond this thing occurred.

What 46 year old men talk to schoolgirls privately? I'm hearing a discordant, jarring fanfare here, like the flute solo in Aqualung.

I don't have to think the girls themselves did anything wrong to recognize that anything a 46-year-old man wanted to say to a young girl should be said publicly. "Thanks for your support!" "Hey, great to have young people on the team!" That sort of thing.

Anything you could, ethically and morally, say to a young girl, with good intent, should be the sort of thing you say publicly.

You know what happens if I go to a friends' house and then excuse myself to chat with a 16 year old daughter alone for a half hour or hour?

Nothing good, I'll tell you that.

By the Way: I don't quote any of the actual sexts and stuff because I consider it sort of irrelevant.

It's sex talk. What are people expecting it to say? It's going to say dirty stuff. That's the point of it.

I don't think there's anything newsworthy in Radar's details of it, except to establish it did in fact happen.

But where there is some genuine hypocrisy on the part of the media is people posting this stuff for giggles, when in fact I bet you precisely similar texts can be found on the phones of half of the people in the media. Or the internet. Or... in shopping malls.

This part of it just seems to me to be mortification for the sake of mortification.

Not to be King Pill of Buzzkill Mountain or anything, but this stuff is really relevant only to prove the fact of the thing.

It's not even super-funny. You know what's genuinely super-funny? Major Content Warning for Pat O'Brien's ludicrously funny voicemails.

You have to pretend to be into Betsy, though.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:32 AM | Comments (357)
Post contains 1239 words, total size 8 kb.

I love when would-be "political consultants" get cute. You understand, these folks will be working for one campaign or another, or one press shop or another, or one pollster or another, regardless of who actually wins or loses. Politics is their career. So it doesn't actually bother them much to try out hare-brained ideas like, for example, advising their client to simply not mention the name of his opponent.

Jon Huntsman is trying out a novel strategy: running for president without criticizing the incumbent by name.

Since returning from his post as ambassador to China last month, Huntsman has made scant mention of the man who appointed him in May 2009—President Barack Obama. And his would-be campaign officials say that won’t change when the former Utah governor officially launches his campaign.

What gain by not referring to the President by name? Try this one on for size: "Jon Huntsman, the Republican Presidential Candidate Not Explicitly Running Against the President." Oooh, it gives ya goosebumps, doesn't it? That there is a man with the gumption to be a contender.

Aside from the substantive problem with Huntsman's non-aggression non-strategy—which even his political so-called specialists admit can only last until the Obama team decides he is more than a two-bit player in this little drama and swats him like a bug—there's a bigger problem. One (or more) of these political geniuses was so enamored of this imbecilic strategy that he just had to boast of it to a reporter.

Which is why the chattering classes today are not talking about Huntsman's bold (I'm assuming it would be bold; I don't know the man from Adam) stand for or against whatever it is he's for or against and pushing that out to the voting public. Instead they're talking about "Huntsman's name gimmick." Great job, would-be Huntsman campaign officials. I can't wait for the second round of process stories when the campaign decides to drop the Epic No-Name Strategy.

I've got to hand it to them, "Jon Huntsman, A Man Who Has Trouble With Names", is without-a-doubt a "novel" campaign slogan.

Okay one more: "Jon Huntsman Has No Name Recognition." Literally. Hah. I crack myself up.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:00 AM | Comments (98)
Post contains 371 words, total size 2 kb.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:03 AM | Comments (173)
Post contains 8 words, total size 1 kb.

He allowed that he'd inappropriately communicated with "about six" (about?) women "over the last three years."

Three years? That's a funny thing. If you say "within the last three years," that includes the last year. So you're technically telling the truth if it's demonstrated that you sexted a sextet of sexiful sex kittens in the last twelve months.

The last year is part of the last three years, right?

Now this article doesn't actually nail the date perfectly, but this newly-revealed sexchat is from this past August.

“I really regret that this was sent to you,” Nobles told the Las Vegas Sun, after confirming that an unnamed roommate went into her Facebook account, which had been inadvertently left open, and emailed the Sun a screen shot of a private conversation between Weiner and Nobles that appears to date from August. “She thought someone should know,” Nobles said.

Given the extent of the congressman’s flirtatious speech and physical details that have been made public, there’s little from the brief excerpt of the Nobles-Weiner conversation that could shock us. The bit of the conversation that was made available to the Sun shows the two exchanging terms of endearment such as “sexy” and “sugar” and arranging some sort of meeting for the next day — although it’s not clear from what’s presented whether it’s a meeting that was to take place online or in person.

August?

August?

When did this guy get married?

Oh, right, July 11, of the month before.

Ah well, you know what they call it: The seven-day itch.

What a sweetheart.

Yeah, this guy's a creep. My doubts were ill-founded. As I eventually said, this wasn't an investigation so much as it was an intervention.

Thanks to Andy.

Oh, the Comely Coed has spoken about her friendly frivolities with Weiner, to the NYT. She's sticking to her story.

Ms. Cordova said that after Mr. Weiner began following her, critics of the congressman started sending her harassing messages. She said she then began communicating, always electronically, with the congressman about their shared annoyance with those critics.

Ms. Cordova provided a portion of her communications with Mr. Weiner to The Times, in which they messaged back and forth about the online detractors and their tactics. But Ms. Cordova would not make all of her interaction with him available for review.

As a general matter, casual discussions between arms-length strangers are not too revealing to share.

Wife Adamant He Not Resign, Pushing Back Against Calls For His Resignation? Well, women do respond to status.

Anthony Weiner is about to become a low-side-of-moderate status male. No one's impressed by yet another greasy Communications Strategist at Center for American Progress.

Still, it's one thing for a wife to be supportive. It's another thing to be war-rooming it.

I guess she learned this from Hillary.

Notes From A Scandal: Surreal. Here we have Andrew Breitbart, who I actually know, showing Vincent D'Onofrio a picture of a Congressman's erection.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:26 PM | Comments (421)
Post contains 539 words, total size 4 kb.

The 20 Hottest Conservative Women in New Media 2011

If you're not already stealing their garbage following them uh, on Twitter, well you should be. Also try to not to let your account get #hacked. Because if that story didn't fly for a Democrat politician, it sure as hell won't work for you.

Worst Case Scenarios

So what happens if a plane crash kills an entire professional sports team?
Well they have plans for that and have since the 60's. Likewise there are plans to continue the US government if it was destroyed in an attack or natural disaster. And if you ever wondered why Cheney and Rumsfeld found it so easy to work out of 'undisclosed locations', well it turns out that they had been practicing that very scenario all during the 80's.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:36 PM | Comments (919)
Post contains 616 words, total size 7 kb.

Yeah she's great.

She's like the "rational Olbermann," huh?

Oh, and for a little bonus: Joan Walsh, who's just so smart she doesn't comprehend that sometimes married men stray.

A video of Joan Walsh confessing her See No Evil style of political analysis might have wound up making her look rather stupid. (Via Ben, in the sidebar.)

One of these days, huh? Maybe it'll get through.

Posted by: Ace at 05:31 PM | Comments (32)
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

There's no crying in baseball. But there are some occasional moments that bring a tear to the eye. The story of Johnathan Taylor might be one of those.

Earlier this year Johnathan broke his neck in a collision with UGA teammate Zach Cone.

Today he made it to the bigs.

But on Wednesday, he was chosen by the Rangers in the draftÂ’s 33rd round. Cone was also drafted by the rangers on Monday. Texas Director of Amateur Scouting Kip Fagg said the team's selection of Taylor was "something we felt was right."

more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:18 PM | Comments (12)
Post contains 103 words, total size 2 kb.