A new Rasmussen poll set for release at 1pm (I think) will have the field thus:

Perry 29, Romney 18, Bachmann 13, Paul 9.

Thanks to Gabe for that.

Update: Poll posted here.

[T]his marks a significant jump in support for Perry, who officially entered the race on Saturday although his candidacy had been rumored for weeks. Just over two weeks ago, a survey of likely primary voters found Romney with 22% support, closely followed by Perry at 18% and Bachman with 16% of the vote.

“Governor Perry is enjoying a bounce from entering the race at precisely the right time”, said Scott Rasmussen. “Now the difficult part begins for the new frontrunner. It’s much easier winning support when people are hoping you will get in the race, than retaining support when you are the frontrunner.”

Ed runs down the crosstabs.

Perry scores highest among men (32%) and women (25%) than any of his competitors. Ron Paul scores best among young voters by a wide margin (29%), but Perry is the only other candidate in double digits (17%). Perry wins all of the other age demographics, and he also scores highest among Republicans (29%) and non-Republicans (28%). Perry also wins every income demographic, above the $40K level with 31% or more of the vote.

On ideology, the Texas governor has wide appeal. Perry gets a full third of self-identified conservatives, beating Romney (16%) and Bachmann (14%) combined. Romney narrowly edges Perry among moderates (27/25) and wins clearly among liberals, but Perry still comes in second, 24/15. He wins easily among Tea Party “members” with a whopping 39% to Bachmann’s second-place finish of 21%. Perry also wins among non-Tea Party members over Romney, albeit narrowly at 27/24, and has a clear victory among those unsure of their Tea Party affiliation. 24/13 over Romney.

As I've mentioned, I've been looking for a unifying candidate, one with wide appeal.

And I will in fact trade width over depth -- I'd rather have a candidate liked by 80% of the party than one loved by 30% and disliked by many of the others (and disliked by independents as well).

Perry's mention of a "treasonous" QE3 and, worse yet, a Jesse Helms-style warning to Bernacke to not visit Texas, is immediately troubling, though. I've been hoping for a candidate who did not set out to frighten independents, and with one of his first statements, Perry did just that.

I hope he'll knock that off. Despite the lefty Greg Sergeant's claim, he does seem to be recalibrating that.

The Governor was expressing his frustration with the current economic situation and the out of control spending that persists in Washington. Most Americans would agree that spending more money is not the answer to the economic issues facing the country.

Posted by: Ace at 08:41 AM | Comments (471)
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The economy? "Bad luck."

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. "But over the last six months we've had a run of bad luck." Obama listed three events overseas -- the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises -- which set the economy back.

"All those things have been headwinds for our economy," Obama said. "Now, those are things that we can't completely control. The question is, how do we manage these challenging times and do the right things when it comes to those things that we can control?"

"The problem," Obama continued, "is that we've got the kind of partisan brinksmanship that is willing to put party ahead of country, that is more interested in seeing their political opponents lose than seeing the country win. Nowhere was that more evident than in this recent debt ceiling debacle."

Several things. Obama spent like a drunken sailor and got a very weak "recovery" for it. Typical recoveries feature early growth rates of 5%, 6%, even 10% sometimes. The best he got I think was 4.5%, which was immediately followed by lame rates of 3.5% and 3.2%. (Lame for a recovery, I mean, when you're growing from a diminished base, and so you generally expect bigger growth rates when you pull out from them, as you recover what was just recently lost. Those 3.5% type rates are okay for an economy it its normal expansion/decent economy phase -- but not for the actual recovery part of it.)

Why was his "recovery" so stunted and weak? Partly maybe because "this time it's different," as many people seem to think, but largely because he spent his trillion dollars on the wrong things, stuff that offered a very feeble short-term boost but did not actually spur an economy capable of growing on its own without that boost.

Part of it is ObamaCare and the EPA and all the rest of the regulatory regime he's established -- even when he's not imposing higher taxes on business, he's imposing stealth taxes (which the government doesn't even get the benefit of) in the form of simply making business less profitable. He seems to almost take a perverse pride in the fact that he's made it difficult for businessmen to make any money (social justice!), without realizing that it's these same businessmen he currently needs to hire more people.

How do you hire more people when you're actually losing money?

In addition to the jackass regulations and mandates he's already imposed, everyone knows his next move is more of that, so investors look out and see a very unpredictable business environment. (Well, it can be predicted the environment will be bad, but they can't figure out in what concrete way it will be bad.)

They can't define the risk, so they avoid it.

This is what the smartest man in the world calls "bad luck" -- the natural consequences of his own Leftwing Social Justice Avenger punitive economic policies.

Good luck is the product of good design. Bad luck is the product of bad design.

Another point here is that Obama again blames the Republicans' "brinksmanship" for the slowdown and downgrade. Despite the fact that slowdown started months before the debt ceiling debate, and despite the fact that the debt ceiling debate was already over, and had been for almost a week, when S&P dropped us to AA+.

Obama threatened to veto perfectly sound policies like Cut Cap and Trade, and the Majority Leader of the Senate was fond of labeling such workable initiatives "dead on arrival."

And yet only one party dabbled in "brinksmanship"?

Obama was also confronted by a Tea Partier who wanted to know why his Vice President had branded Tea Partiers "terrorists." Obama's defense? You did it first.

After calling another person, Obama circled back to address Rhodes' question: "First of all, in fairness to this gentleman who raised a question, I absolutely agree that everybody needs to try to tone down the rhetoric."

Obama added: "Now, in fairness, since I've been called a socialist who wasn't born in this country, who is destroying America and taking away its freedoms because I passed a health care bill, I'm all for lowering the rhetoric."

After the event, Obama came up to speak with Rhodes and another Tea Party.

It's hard to quote their conversation exactly, because of the music, but Rhodes again raised "the terrorist" comment and Obama defended his vice president, Joe Biden.

It's all about him.

Posted by: Ace at 07:22 AM | Comments (409)
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This might get very, very interesting.

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan is strongly considering a run for president. Ryan, who has been quietly meeting with political strategists to discuss a bid over the past three months, is on vacation in Colorado discussing a prospective run with his family. Ryan’s concerns about the effects of a presidential campaign – and perhaps a presidency – on his family have been his primary focus as he thinks through his political future.

“He’s coming around,” says a Republican source close to Ryan, who has been urging the 41-year-old to run.

“With Paul, it’s more about obligation than opportunity,” says another Wisconsin Republican. “He is determined to have the 2012 election be about the big things. If that means he has to run, he’s open to it.”

My number 1 requirement for a presidential candidate is executive experience but Ryan is a guy I'd waive it for. He's a budget expert, he knows how to build them and where the bodies are buried. It's not ideal but if like I do you think the budget and entitlement reforms are the key to a lot of what's going to happen in the next few years, we could do a lot worse than Ryan.

There are obviously significant challenges facing a Ryan run.

His entitlement reform is a lightning rod that Democrats would love to run against and by run against I mean, lie about. Of course any Republican is going to have to answer questions about it and you could make the case it's best to have the man who understands it better than anyone defending it.

It's kind of late in the game to build and organization and raise money. Rick Perry could do it because of his Texas ties. Could a congressman from Wisconsin, even as one as popular with the base as Ryan do it? Maybe given new technologies but it'll be a struggle.

And then there's history. A sitting member of the House hasn't been elected President in a long, long time. It's a big leap from running in a relatively safe congressional district to running a national campaign or even just a multi-state primary effort.

On the upside, Ryan has a lot going for him. One of the big things Perry brings to the race that no other candidate has to date is an ability to mix anger about Obama and the present state of the nation with a sense of optimism about the future of the country. Ryan would bring that as well.

Then there's this from Obama's health care summit.

Ryan v. Perry would be a tough choice but for once we'd have a tough primary choice. I'd love that.

I see people in the comments talking Ryan up as a VP candidate. It's not going to happen.

First, it's almost a lock that any eventual GOP nominee will run to Rubio and wisely so.

Second, you pick Ryan and you are tied to his plan. It's likely any candidate for President is going to have their own approach to dealing with entitlements, why would they tie themselves to Ryan's plan so directly? Even if they eventually come around to his plan, they are going to want as much wiggle room during the Mediscare fight (aka the general election campaign) as possible. Picking Ryan as the VP candidate eliminates that.

Finally, if he's not going to be President, Ryan is far more valuable in the House.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:39 AM | Comments (232)
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Illinois identified as one of the top (bottom?) 5 "sinkhole" states. You can see the full list here. Apart from Kentucky, they're all Democrat strongholds. I was rather shocked to find California absent from the bottom 5. C'mon, guys, Illinois is lapping you!

Many cities in California are looking into ways to cut current worker pensions to save money. It's against California law to cut the pensions of already-retired public employees in many cases, but there are loopholes in those laws that cities may take advantage of. And anyway, if the money can't be paid out it won't be, no matter what the law says.

Dr. Doom drinks the “stimulus” Kool-Aid.

Europe has two plays left. Go big (eurobonds) or go home (break up the currency union). I don't think "eurobonds" will work anyhow -- and not just because they are prohibited under the current Maastricht treaty.

Global recession warning.

1-2-3-4! I declare a class war! It's becoming very obvious that the world economy is losing its ability to integrate the slower, duller, and less-flexible population. This is the downside of a high-technology information-based economy: many people simply can't keep up. They can't stay competitive in the job-market. That's why some jobs go begging even in a 10%+ unemployment economy.

While traveling through his Kingdom, his Majesty informs the plebs that making making a profit off of SUV's and trucks is too gauche to be borne. His Majesty does not approve, and wishes his subjects to begin manufacturing solar-powered mopeds forthwith.

Michael Barone talks about the failure of the Midwestern manufacturing model and the success of the Texas "low tax, low regulation" climate.

Hey, California, how’s that “Amazon tax” working out for you? Not too good.

This is why we are DOOMed. (Spend some time at Lileks’ “Institute of Official Cheer”. It’s hilarious, but be warned: it's a ghastly time-sink. You can lose days of your life in that place, laughing hysterically all the while.)

China, always a quick study, decided to copy our real-estate bubble too. I'm a notorious China bear, but even China bulls have to admit that a lot of cracks are showing in the so-called "China miracle" lately.

Denationalize (privatize) the currency. I've been saying this for years and years. Modern technology has removed most of the hurdles to implementation that existed in former times (most "money" these days is electronic anyhow).

UPDATE 1: Our paper dollar problem.

Is the word “paralysis” an exaggeration? Hardly.... In the post-1971 system, the role of the Fed is to set short-term interest rates. The open market committee’s announcement last week means that by the middle of 2013, the Fed expects to be enjoying its fifth year of vacation from its one universally acknowledged job.

UPDATE 2: Teh Krugman doesn't understand Texas. But he's hardly unique in that regard.

UPDATE 3: For fans of technical analysis (I'm not one myself): The death cross!
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:55 AM | Comments (180)
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I understand that Governor Palin has been taking fire from asshole reporters for three years now. I get that her life is basically a media circus. Part of that, of course, is that she wanted the attention. But wanting attention and wanting what the media did to her are two different things. So I understand she's a bit shell-shocked.

This, though, is not appropriate behavior.

What happened was that Alex Pappas of The Daily Caller, one of the rising stars among political scribes and a meticulously careful and wonderfully polite, fair-minded young man (an aside: I've known him since he was in junior high school), wrote a perfectly fine story about Palin's current stances vis-a-vis the presidential race. In it, one of the things she said was that if Mitt Romney is the nominee, well, of course she would endorse him over Barack Obama.

Fox Nation picked up the story and, in its own headline (not Pappas', not the Daily Caller's, but its own headline completely apart from anything Pappas ever wrote) played up the "Romney endorse" angle in a way that apparently did not make it clear that the endorsement might be in the general election, rather than the primary campaign. (The headline is no longer available at Fox Nation, so I can't say exactly what the wording was.)

Anyway, the Palin team pounced. Specifically inviting over reporter Kasie Hunt from Politico so she could hear the exchange, Palin called Pappas' cell phone and began berating him in a very scolding manner for writing a headline suggesting she supports Romney. Pappas didn't even know what she was talking about. When he tried to say that neither he nor his editors had written such a headline, she said she didn't have time for this, that she needed to go back to the "real people" at the State Fair, and hung up on him.

Palin needs to get a grip. This was both sloppy staff work and rude behavior from Palin. One of our frequent gripes with the President is that he's a thin-skinned whiner who can't handle the attention that comes with national office. I get that Palin has had a hard time. It will not be any easier from the Oval Office.

She had a proper option here. If Palin honestly believed Alex had written, incorrectly, that she endorsed Romney then she should have asked for a correction and, whether she got one or not, issued a statement making her position clear. Of course, if she'd taken this level-headed approach, her misperception about Alex's piece would have been cleared right up when she asked for the correction. Yelling at someone on the phone was probably cathartic, but it wasn't presidential.

On the topic of Things Not Presidential: This? Also not very presidential. Accusing public servants of being "almost treasonous" because they have a different view of monetary policy plays well for Ronulans, but then again we expect so very little in the way of good behavior from Ronulans. Hearing it from a legitimate candidate like Perry surprised me. Particularly since, if he is elected, Perry's term will overlap with Bernanke's term.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:32 AM | Comments (335)
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There. Are. FOUR. Lights!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:54 AM | Comments (78)
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Very busy today so you're going to get the minimalist ONT and like it.

The Romance of Space

NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson in the Cupola module of the International Space Station observing Earth:

And here's a view of the Perseids entering Earth's atmosphere:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:32 PM | Comments (545)
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It turns out that delegating the Stimulus to Dr. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, Ph.D., wasn't the smartest thing the Smartest Man In The World ever did.

U.S. consumer sentiment worsened sharply in early August, falling to the lowest level in more than three decades, after retail sales posted the biggest gain in four months in July.

High unemployment, stagnant wages, gridlock in Congress, and a stockmarket slump all contributed to a consumer mood that was as grim as when Jimmy Carter was President during the recession of 1980 and interest rates were more than 20 percent.

...

The preliminary August reading on the consumer sentiment index fell to 54.9 in early August, down from 63.7 in July, and the index has fallen for three straight months in the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan survey.

Well, you know, the public understands, as the President has recently said, that the government has almost no power to affect the economy (revising previous statements that the government was going to put everything right).

So, maybe the public just understand this is all part of the economic cycle, for which Obama can hardly be blamed.

...

"Never before in the history of the surveys have so many consumers spontaneously mentioned negative aspects of the government's role," Curtin said.

Oh. Note though that they are speaking of "the government," including the much-maligned House Republicans, who won't compromise.

Obama doesn't compromise, either -- no offers to suspend the implementation of a costly and unpopular health care bill, for example -- but the media overlooks this fact, and our own guys frankly do not make the point themselves enough.

Thanks to gg.

Posted by: Ace at 01:30 PM | Comments (1041)
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This is my theory. I wouldn't bet my life on it or anything. But it's something that occurred to me.

I know that Palin supporters aren't going to like the theory.

But, here it is:

Palin has for some time been sounding, to me, like someone who would be willing to run, to fill a vacuum, if no good conservative ran, and if the party wished her to run.

In Iowa, she debuted the documentary Undefeated, but didn't announce a run. She showed up in Iowa on Friday, just before the straw poll, but didn't announce a run.

It's my thought that she wasn't announcing a run, but keeping her name out there in people's minds, to remind them that she could serve, if people asked it of her.

Not a declaration, then, but a softer expression of willingness to run, if she were needed.

But even though the Ames straw poll permitted a write-in result, Palin's name was apparently marked only on less than 35 ballots, at most.

The results of the Iowa Republican straw poll of August 13 are: (1) Michelle Bachmann 4,823; (2) Ron Paul 4,671; (3) Tim Pawlenty 2,293; (4) Rick Santorum 1,657; (5) Herman Cain 1,456; (6) Rick Perry 718 (write-in); (7) Mitt Romney 567; ( Newt Gingrich 385; (9) Jon Huntsman 69; (10) Thad McCotter 35. There were another 162 scattering votes.

I assume that if Palin's write-ins exceeded Thad McCotter's, she'd be listed in the top ten, so I assume she must have gotten less than 35. Even if I'm wrong on that, she definitely got 162 votes or less (the number of "scattering" votes).

Now Rick Perry had a big advantage over Palin as far as vote-getting -- he declared the day of the straw poll, and furthermore, he had made it increasingly plain all this past week he would declare on Saturday.

Still, he placed 6 in write-ins with 718 -- despite not being an officially declared candidate until just before the polling had begun. Palin, by comparison, did not receive enough votes to appear as a name on the list.

Oh: Perry did have a disadvantage, too -- Rep. King suggested that Perry should be punished for attempting to bigfoot the Ames results.

If my theory is right -- and again, this is just a theory -- then Palin was looking to Iowa to see if there would be a groundswell of support for her, even as an undeclared (but available and weighing options) candidate, and there was no such groundswell, so this would count in her mind as a sign that 2012 isn't her year.

Not that Palin is talking like she's decided against a run.

Sarah Palin has left Iowa, her “One Nation” bus tour stopping in Saturday at the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan in Dixon, Ill., but looking back on her whirlwind visit to the Iowa State Fair on Friday, and some comments she made in response to reporters, it seems she is not just stringing her indecision out for fun and fame. She appears to be weighing her options and believes that the rules of timing and engagement do not apply to her.

“Each campaign that I have ever run in these 20 years of elective office have been kind of unconventional, right, Todd? We’ve always been outspent, two-to-one, five-to-one, 10-to-one. Never won any polls heading into election night. But usually won the election. So it would be unconventional and very grass roots.”

She threw a "mild barb" at Perry:

“See, this is what I don’t understand about the press,” Palin said. “You asked me ‘What’s the difference between your experience as a governor and Rick Perry’s?’ and I said there’s two different forms of government in the state of Alaska and in the state of Texas. Alaska has a very powerful executive position. Texas, it’s not as powerful. That doesn’t mean he’s doing a better job or worse job than any other governor, including myself. It just means it’s different.”

Well, come on, it's saying he didn't have much power in Texas.

She also emphasized that Bachmann's win (and Paul's place) was due to simple organizational strength in the state -- an investment of time and, of course, money (which she also emphasized itself) they had put in to winning the straw poll, which she did not. (She didn't say she didn't, but that is self-evident.)

Even if you don't buy my theory, obviously a strong Palin showing in the write-ins would have been a positive signal to her, so at the very least she didn't get that positive signal.

Even if you don't think the results reduced the odds Palin will run, at least it must be conceded that a strong write-in showing could have increased those odds, but failed to do so.

Explanation? This may explain the purpose of her bus tour, which seemed to be engineered to heighten/maintain her relevance in the mix of possible candidates.

She didn't announce or anything, but did seem to be trying to increase her profile. It seemed like a campaign event, but absent a campaign.

If my theory is right, then the bus tour would be an example of her stealth strategy of not declaring, but offering herself to the public; if the public demanded her candidacy, or nominated her (as the old way went) by acclaim, she'd run.

But if that's the case, then her experiment with candidacy-by-acclaim does not seem to be yielding the results she hoped for.

Posted by: Ace at 12:26 PM | Comments (413)
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Here's how it works:

1. The media pushes a meme. In Bachmann's case, it's that she's crazy and might be sexually strange.

2. They run sexist and sexualizing photos of her. If asked why they have not run similar photos about liberal women they like, they will say "Well this photo reinforces impressions the public has about Bachmman."

3. They hope you do not notice that they were the ones pushing these "impressions" in the first place, later using them to justify their viciousness, and also hope you don't notice that when they say the public has these impressions about Bachmman, they chiefly mean the media itself.

It's a bad picture.

There have been hundreds of embarrassing photos taken of liberals -- it's hard to look presidential with barbecue sauce smeared all over your lips -- but they're never published.

Why?

Because they don't "reinforce an impression" the media wishes to reinforce.

It's always the narrative.

Why doesn't the media note Obama's fifty seven states? Oh, because no one thinks he's dumb.

Um, no one in your newsroom thinks he's dumb. I assure you a lot of people think that President Prompter is a mediocre intelligence, at best. (Where's his transcripts? Why have three colleges collectively put them into a leak-proof lead-lined vault beneath the sea? Because his grades were that good?)

This photo won't hurt Bachmann much. I doubt it will hurt her at all. It's so grossly unfair it says a lot more about the photographer and the media pushing it than it says about Bachmann -- people get that. They know a hatchet-job when they see one.

Posted by: Ace at 11:22 AM | Comments (343)
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