This guy is not in jail for a parole violation. He is in jail because he's a convenient scapegoat for Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's failure.

He also wants to know who gave the order to not rescue his son:

When I heard that there’s a very good chance that the White House as well as other members of the military knew what was going on, and obviously someone had to say, “Don’t go rescue them.” Because every person in the military, their first response is, “We’re going to go rescue them.” We need to find out who it was that gave that command.

Audio of the interview at the link.

Posted by: Ace at 01:46 PM | Comments (312)
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And the partisan split? D+4!

This is a very naughty poll. I need to spank it.

The WaPo points out that 50/47 is actually a statistical tie (Margin of Error), which I guess is true, but they go on to suggest that it's a genuine lead, inferring from other stats.

Romney does now boast a statistically — and substantively — important lead on the economy, which has long been the central issue of the race. When it comes to handling the nation’s struggling economy, 52 percent of likely voters say they trust Romney more, while 43 percent say they have more faith in the president.

And just as the challenger has leaped ahead on this score, he has effectively neutralized what has been a consistent fall-back for Obama: economic empathy. In the new poll, 48 percent say Obama is more in tune with the economic problems people are having, and nearly as many, 46 percent, say Romney is the one who is more in touch. Just two weeks ago, Obama had a nine-point lead on the question.

One more thing they point out:

Should [Romney's 19 point lead with independents] stick, it would be the sharpest tilt among independents in a presidential election since Ronald ReaganÂ’s 1984 landslide win.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (282)
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Because killing is bad. So it's "good" they're killing themselves.

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (156)
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Romney didn't testify at her divorce -- there was no hearing on it.

Rather, he testified in 1991, when the Former Mrs. Stemberg sought to re-litigate her original settlement. Romney was called in to talk about the value of the 500,000 shares in Staples she received. Or Stemberg's net worth. Something like that.

Her theory was that Stemberg had put up Romney to deliberately lowball the value of Staples. Like I've noted, this makes no sense -- if Staples stock isn't worth all that much, than The Former Mrs. Stemberg's shares from the settlement are worth less, and that increases the chances a judge would agree that the original settlement was unfair, and put it aside.

But whatever. Her claim rests on the idea that Romney knew Staples would grow in value, but lied about.

Here's the problem: As an initial investor, Romney had the option to buy a lot of Staples stock. If he really thought Staples were a surefire hit, he'd have exercised all those options, and bought as much stock as he was legally entitled to.

He didn't. He said Staples could grow, or could fail, because, apparently, he believed it could grow, or could fail. Thus he hedged his own bets, buying some Staples stock, but not as much as he was entitled to.

From the court transcript. The questions come from "Stemberg's lawyer," the article says, which I assume means Tom Stemberg, because this seems like friendly questioning. The answers are from Romney.

Q: "Thank you. Now, you say that before making the investment in Staples round C you read the statement 'Additionally, this is planned to be Staples final equity offering prior to a public offering of mid 1989.' And you say that you did not - Strike that. You say you read that statement. Let me ask you this, sir. Did you, therefore, as a result of that subscribe to the full amount to which you were entitled to subscribe?"

A: "I did not."

Q: "And why was that, sir?"

A: "Because while I believed that there was a realistic probability that we would achieve that outcome, there was also a realistic probability that we would either lose our money or we would achieve something less than that. And my personal assessment and that of my partners was that the risk that we would not achieve the plan was high enough that we should not subscribe to our full amount."

Q: "And you did not subscribe to the full amount?"

A: "We did not subscribe to the full amount."

The Former Mrs. Stemberg sold half of her shares before Staples went public. The price did indeed grow after that. Though, as a matter of fact, it seems to have grown by only modest amounts until it began taking off in the mid-nineties, then really jumped around 1998. The bigger growth came well after this 1991 relitigation.

The Former Mrs. Stemberg seemed to have done what Romney did -- hedged her bets by dumping half the stock early for some cash money, rather than pinning her hopes to an explosive gain in value. And she seems bitter about that decision of hers, and looking for someone to blame for her own decision.

If she'd kept all the 500,000 in shares, she'd be fabulously wealthy. She didn't, so she's not quite as wealthy.

She didn't have full confidence in Staples -- some, but not much. Turns out, that's the level of confidence Mitt Romney had in it, too, based on his own investments in the stock.

As Powerline says, what this has to do with Mitt Romney remains something of a mystery.

By The Way: I'm suuuuure this is nothing -- like, totes sure -- but Gloria Allred met privately with Barack Obama two weeks ago.

The Endless Divorce: And I do mean endless.

As I said, this divorce is now celebrating its silver anniversary -- its 25th anniversary -- and is as passionate as ever.

[I]t's hardly news that Stemberg believes she settled for too little.

"The entire spectacle is about her client's divorce, which began almost twenty-five years ago. It has been litigated and re-litigated," one source with knowledge of the the divorce proceedings tells me. "She has attempted to get her settlement overturned, but failed. She appealed the decision, and failed. She tried to take her case to the State Supreme Court, and was rejected. She has accused her husband and others of defrauding her, to no avail. She has sued her attorneys for malpractice, and lost. She has declared bankruptcy, and tried to sell her story as a book and a movie, also to no avail."

...

[T]he court rejected Sullivan-Stemberg's request [to set aside the settlement] in 1994. Instead, Stemberg-Sullivan was found to have sold her stock expeditiously, before it matured to what it would be worth only a couple years later. "[T]he wife cannot blame the husband for her uncoerced decision to sell approximately one half of her shares prior to the initial public offering of the Staples stock," the judge ruled. She had 500,000 shares of Staples, from the first divorce settlement.

Tom Stemberg was granted a divorce on grounds of "cruel and abusive treatment," incidentally.

I guess that just about wraps this up. Not only is it a non-story, I think it's pretty plain it's such a non-story -- at least about Mitt Romney; I guess there's a story here about one of the bitterest divorced women in recent history -- not even the Obama-loving media will take this stinky bait.

Posted by: Ace at 12:03 PM | Comments (339)
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Always an excuse. Always a scapegoat.

Now they're blaming Bill Clinton for giving them bad political advice.

Which they took. Which they decided was the best advice available to them.

But it's Clinton's fault.

How Bill Clinton May Have Hurt the Obama Campaign

by Matt Bai

...

[T]here is one crucial way in which the 42nd president may not have served the 44th quite as well. In these final weeks before the election, Mr. ClintonÂ’s expert advice about how to beat Mitt Romney is starting to look suspect.

You may recall that last spring, just after Mr. Romney locked up the Republican nomination, Mr. Obama’s team abruptly switched its strategy for how to define him. Up to then, the White House had been portraying Mr. Romney much as George W. Bush had gone after John Kerry in 2004 – as inauthentic and inconstant, a soulless climber who would say anything to get the job.

But it was Mr. Clinton who forcefully argued to Mr. Obama’s aides that the campaign had it wrong. The best way to go after Mr. Romney, the former president said, was to publicly grant that he was the “severe conservative” he claimed to be, and then hang that unpopular ideology around his neck.

Matt Bai excuses Team Obama for taking this advice:

...

It’s not hard to understand why Mr. Obama and his advisers took Mr. Clinton’s advice to heart; to disregard it would be like telling Derek Jeter, “Hey man, appreciate the input, but I think I know how to make that flip play from the hole just fine on my own.”

It's difficult to find the words. There is just something deeply pathological about Obama and his minions. They can always find an excuse and a scapegoat. Their decisions and their mistakes are never their own-- it's always someone else's fault.

At Commentary:

This is clearly intended to absolve the anonymous Obama aides for making a decision that they — and the president — must have signed off on before it was implemented. Bai goes to great lengths to take them off the hook, and even compares their position to a ballplayer who would reject advice from Derek Jeter. In other words Bai is saying that anyone, even really smart political operatives like those working in Obama’s Chicago headquarters, or the top guys themselves like David Axelrod or David Plouffe, had no choice but to bow to the 42nd president’s wisdom.

...

[T]he idea that it was only Clinton that advocated this strategy or that without his influence the geniuses running the Obama campaign would not have made this mistake is so patently self-serving on the part of his sources that itÂ’s a wonder that a generally savvy observer like Bai doesnÂ’t point this out.

There was some debate over which strategy Obama would pursue, flip-flopper or extremist ideologue. Ramesh Ponuru argued that Obama would obviously pursue the latter -- the former makes him sound too much like a moderate/centrist/independent voter, who tend to be up in the air about policy questions too.

Clinton may have argued for that strategy, but it was approved in Chicago.

And now they want to claim they were just victims, victims yet again.

Posted by: Ace at 11:07 AM | Comments (426)
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You don't say.

Video here.

He says he was fine with math until 7th grade. But Malia is now a freshman in high school, and he's "pretty lost."

Depending on what Malia's taking -- if she's taking honors or AP, that could mean she's doing geometry (proofs). If she's not, then she's just doing... basic algebra.

I know algebra throws a lot of people. I just didn't expect the rara avis super-scholar President of the United States to be one of them.

Thanks to @rdbrewer4, from the sidebar.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (508)
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Yuch.

It's not the profanity I object to. It's Obama's mad scramble to be hip again. I object to the profanity = hip notion.

I just object to him, period.

As we left the Oval Office, executive editor Eric Bates told Obama that he had asked his six-year-old if there was anything she wanted him to say to the president. … [S]he said, ‘Tell him: You can do it.’ Obama grinned. … ‘You know, kids have good instincts,’ Obama offered. ‘They look at the other guy and say, “Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.”’”

This, by the way, who campaigned in 2008 on Hope and Change, and who vowed that today was the day when the sea level began to fall, and the earth began to heal.

This is also a guy who took the exceedingly thin series of claims he's made over the past two years, repackaged them in a 20 page pamphlet which mostly contains big pictures, and called it his new agenda for a second term.

As the CBO says: We can't budget-score a speech.

"You Know, I Actually Believe My Own Bullshit." -- Captain Bullshit in 2009.

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (204)
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While we wait for the bossman, some links and an open thread that's still got that new car smell in it.

Condi Rice and Christian Heinze on the bogus "war on women."

Rick Wilson on the state of the race.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:00 AM | Comments (256)
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• Romney Erases Gender Gap In New Poll
  
• Americans Face Rising Prices, Taxes And Healthcare Costs In 2013
  
• Democrats Illegally Trying To Supress Votes In Florida. FBI Gets Involved
  
• Detroit News Endorses Romney
  
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Decides Not To Endorse Any In Presidential And Senate Race
  
• Never Go Full Colin Powell: Colin Endorses Obama For President Again
  
• In Case You Missed Steven Crowder's Bowie/Obama Spoof
  
• Affluent Suburbs Swing To Debate Tested Romney
  
• Irony: Obama May Win Thanks To Fracking Boom He Doesn't Support
  
• Bill Clinton, From Savior To Potential Scapregoat In Less Than Two Months
  
• Palin Calls Out Matthews For Accusing Her Of Racism
  
• Polls With Large Voters Samples Favor Romney, Polls With Small Voter Samples Favor Obama. Why?
  
• New Iron Man 3 Trailer
  
• Obama Campaign To Continue With The Romnesia Crap
  
• Dem Super PACs Moving Some Money Into Pennsylvania
  
• Brazilian Student Sells Virginity For $700,000+
  
• A Picture Says A Thousand Words
  

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:09 AM | Comments (663)
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Happy Thursday.

After getting soundly mocked, CNN pulled that post on the hormone/voting study. "Some elements of the story did not meet the editorial standards of CNN."

Cable provider Armstrong Utilities, which operates in 6 states including Ohio and Pennsylvania, is offering "2016: Obama’s America" as a “Free Movie Special” to all its subscribers on-demand at no charge.

There's lots of speculation on Twitter about how bad it would be for Obama if Hurricane Sandy hit New Hampshire or Philly right around Election Day. There's no early voting in Pennsylvania, so if the storm makes voting in Philly difficult on Election Day . . . well, I expect there'll be talk of letting voting go on the next day. An explainer on why Sandy's so hard to predict right now.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (384)
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