Some suspect that Mr. Obama's opinion of himself might be on the favorable side of the spectrum.

From a book called "The Obamas" by Jodi Kantor:

Obama had always had a high estimation of his ability to cast and run his operation. When David Plouffe, his campaign manager, first interviewed for a job with him in 2006, the senator gave him a warning: “I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it,” he said. “It’s hard to give up control when that’s all I’ve known.” Obama said nearly the same thing to Patrick Gaspard, whom he hired to be the campaign’s political director. “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Obama told him. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

In the Top Four Presidents, All Time: Remember this crap?

“The issue here is not going be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (372)
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It's an old saw which I happen to think is true that weekend polling results in a more liberal skew. So before I cut my throat, I'll wait to see if Gallup's numbers shift back to Romney as Friday, Saturday, and Sunday's figures drop off the track.

Allah links to a Washington Post purported election model. You enter guesses as to what you think Obama's job approval rating, and the GDP rate of growth, will be on election day, and that predicts, supposedly, Obama's odds of victory.

According to the model, his odds of winning are high. As Allah notes, you have to assume a job approval rate of 45% (likely) and 0.0% growth (unlikely but possible) before Obama's odds of winning drop, fractionally, below 50%.

Here's my problem with that.

First, we have to look at the typical business cycle. It begins with a recession, and then proceeds to a recovery. After that comes a period of expansion, and then stagnation, and then a new recession.

But the recession/recovery usually has a V shape -- the economy drops in activity fairly precipitously, but then regains in activity also quite rapidly. Thus forming a "V." Quick stroke down, quick stroke up.

A real recovery is marked by rapid growth-- 5.5%, 7%, even 8 or 9% -- as the economy quickly makes up for past losses and rises back up to about where it had been before the recession.

Now, that is critical -- that a recovery usually brings the economy back to where it had been before the recession. Because after the recovery comes a growth or expansion phase of around 3%. Now, that's 3% of real expansion, of new dollars, new wealth. Because the economy had already recovered, so any amount you add -- 2.5%, 3.0% -- it's all to the good. It's all new wealth.

2.5% - 3.5% growth is what you expect out of an economy in the expansion phase. Such growth figures are good. The economy is growing -- great!

The Washington Post model assumes that such rates of growth will be good for Obama.

I do not believe this assumption.

Because, in the past, 2.5%-3.5% growth was new economic growth above and beyond the previous level of the economy.

Obama has not presided over a proper recovery. I don't think the term "recovery" really applies here. It's an L-shaped recession, a severe drop down and then a horizontal eking along the bottom.

Yes, there's some feeble growth -- 2.5%, 1.7%, 0.4%, whatever the quarterly rate might be in a quarter.

But note the missing thing here -- at no point has the economy actually rebounded to its past levels. If that happened, 2.0% growth might be considered "Meh, not bad, but I'll take it."

But given that the economy has never actually recovered, it's a mistake to assume that the 2.5-3.5% growth rates we typically see in an expansion following an actual recovery are acceptable in an expansion along the bottom, that is, an expansion, yes, but from the previous low created by the recession, and not the previous high established pre-recession.

You know?

In a normal economy -- say, Clinton's -- 2.5% growth would be acceptable because, by the time of November 1996, we'd already recovered from the 1991 recession (in fact, we had almost fully recovered before the election) and were now just adding on to that.

That's not true here.

We have 8+% unemployment -- really 10%, and really 15% by the real unemployment figures.

That's not normal in an "expansion."

Because this isn't an expansion. It did not follow a recovery.

So it is a mistake to think that 1.7% is going to cut it for Mr. Obama.

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 PM | Comments (230)
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I watched almost everything they used for the clips here -- including Exo-Man.

I got mad at my dad because at one point in Exo-Man, someone said, "Kill Exo-Man now!" and my dad said, sarcastically, "Kill Exo-Man??!!" Like, pretending he was into it, but totally wasn't. Totally taking me out of my Exo-Man mood.

Anyway. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:06 PM | Comments (152)
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He's actually proud. He doesn't duck the question (well, he claims it's "hearsay" that he sent the picture to the woman; he only allows that it somehow appeared on her phone), and even suggests he could strip down for the reporter, if he'd like.

Of all the things I can't believe here, the thing that is most unbelievable is that this happened in Detroit. Detroit, of all places! World-renown paragon of good, accountable government!
more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (332)
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He's also gay. For no particular reason, other than that he's gay, the Atlantic calls him "catty" regarding disparaging tweets about rivals.

Gay people do that?

Um, isn't that what Twitter is for, gay or straight?

So, they try to pull that Gay Steroetype thing in from Jump Street.

Next step: They're pretty sure he's a monster, and searching for his past comments confirms yes indeed, he's a monster.

ThinkProgress noted Grenell's tendency to make cutting remarks about the appearances of prominent women in media and politics, including his tweet advising MSNBC host Rachel Maddow "to take a breath and put on a necklace," and another suggesting she resembled Justin Bieber.

That's absurd. She looks like McLovin from Superbad and/or a version of Daniel Radcliffe I wouldn't want to make out with.

Wait, what? Who said that?

But there's even more viciously anti-everything hatred from this h8r:

In another tweet, Grenell wrote that "Hillary is starting to look liek Madeline [sic] Albright." He discussed First Lady Michelle Obama working out and "sweating on the East Room carpet." He also asked whether Callista Gingrich's "hair snaps on" ...

Everyone's wondered that.

... and on another occasion, commented how Gingrich's third wife "stands there like she is wife #1." Politico flagged more examples and noted Grenell's "old pastime" of "ridiculing the Gingriches."

Pretty damning evidence -- he has a documented history of attacking his political rivals, especially the liberal ones, and the Gingriches.

But that's not all. He's pumping out H8rade like he's the East Coast H8rade Distribution Center:

Grenell described NBC's "Meet the Press" on Twitter as "a commercial for the Democratic Party & its radical feminist agenda," while taking a few shots at chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and political director and White House correspondent Chuck Todd.

"[A]re any reporters asking HillaryClinton tough questions?" Grenell asked on April 3. "NBC has expert foreign policy reporter Andrea @mitchellreports asking non-questions." On March 27, Grenell tweeted that MSNBC "has ushered @chucktodd so far left he's lost his ability to see a Russian video moment as anything more than a 2nd term reality." That same day, Grenell said what he "love[s] about twitter and facebook is that it has outed reporters from their phony facade of pretend non-partisan commentary."

That's just horrible. What kind of demented homosexual mind could imagine such things about Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd?

I feel like I just walked into that Homo Party that Joe Pesci's character threw in JFK. It's like a Gay Roman Soldier just offered me an amyl nitrate suppository.

Grenell also recently tweeted that New York Times reporter Matt Bai "isn't fit to cover Obama," and once tweeted that this reporter is a "liberal" who "ignores george @stephanopoulos' secret coordination w/ WhiteHouse on contraception," both posts that appear to have been removed. On another occasion, Grenell disputed whether this reporter's article included a "clarification" or, in his view, a "correction." In a subsequent tweet, he alleged that bias was the motivation for clarifying the article.

...

In May 2010, Grenell criticized New York Times columnist Charles Blow in a post headlined "Charles certainly does Blow."

"Blow's writing is choppy and vapid," Grenell wrote in a post that has since been removed.

Charles Blow, vapid?

The scholar who bragged he was gonna show Conservatives how to get their hump on?

Why is this vile homosexual permitted to continue spreading his sexually-degenerate lies?

All these comments by Grennell are missing is a rainbow-colored noose.

Posted by: Ace at 10:15 AM | Comments (137)
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Update: Stewart now says it's time to end the dog wars. But he didn't find fault with the dog stuff until the payback came.

via @slublog

...

Buffoonery in the cause of extremism is no vice.

Olbermann, you pompous hypocrite. Who’s the one “wasting” time on dog issues? Here’s video of Keith Olbermann discussing the Romney/Seamus story from a month ago. And here. And here, here, here, here, and here.

Click on the link to find the links to all those times Olbermann howled about Seamus. There are, not quite literally but sort of, too many examples for me to link.

John Sexton has video of one example, pushing the Seamus Story as important, contrasted with his sudden No Dogs Allowed policy.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (186)
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You thought her ten years of hard living and surgical alteration was just her being crazy.

Nope.

It was preparing to play a 65 year old woman.

Prediction: This film has trouble even getting distributed.

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 AM | Comments (143)
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No national media coverage.

And this is the third racially-motivated attack in which the attackers explicitly cited "Justice for Trayvon" as a motivation or excuse for the brutal attacks.

1. The Baltimore Beating. This was the videotaped gang attack on a drunk St. Patrick's day reveler whose crime was Walking While White (Content Warning).

Baltimore's Chief of Police says it's not a hate crime. He's very worried about the politics.

There's one problem with that: the attackers say otherwise. The man identifying himself as the cameraman who giddily filmed the attack on the white tourist says:

2. The Chicago Mugging. Less vicious than the others-- this was merely a 2-on-1 attack. A veritable Marquis de Queensbury affair.

Although they did punched the downed victim repeatedly in the head.

Hayes and a 15-year-old Chicago boy walked up behind the 19-year-old man victim and pinned his arms to his side, police said. Hayes, 18, then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, “Empty your pockets, white boy.”

The two allegedly rifled through the victim’s pockets, then threw him to the ground and punched him “numerous times” in the head and back before running away, police said. Hayes and the boy are black; the victim is white.

After being arrested, Hayes told police he was upset by the Trayvon Martin case and beat the man up because he was white, Cook County StateÂ’s AttorneyÂ’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said, citing court records.

3. The latest "Justice" attack, in Mobile, Alabama.

According to police, Owens fussed at some kids playing basketball in the middle of Delmar Drive about 8:30 Saturday night. They say the kids left and a group of adults returned, armed with everything but the kitchen sink.

Police tell News 5 the suspects used chairs, pipes and paint cans to beat Owens.

Owens’ sister, Ashley Parker, saw the attack. “It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed.” Parker says 20 people, all African American, attacked her brother on the front porch of his home, using “brass buckles, paint cans and anything they could get their hands on.”

...

What Parker says happened next could make the fallout from the brutal beating even worse. As the attackers walked away, leaving Owen bleeding on the ground, Parker says one of them said “Now thats justice for Trayvon.”

I repeat: No national coverage of this racial hate crime pattern in the media.

Apparently some victims are unworthy, and some hatred and violence is justified.

Is Obama going to say anything? Call at least one of the victims? Attempt to bring calm? Attempt a "Sister Souljah" moment (which could actually benefit him politically) and call out violent black racists?

Apparently not, and the media has decided that's their preferred political strategy, too.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:13 AM | Comments (628)
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The actual question Matthews asked is, "Is there going to be a reluctance on the part of the voters, and the political community that talks politics, as we get into November, about dumping the first African President, the first African-American President? Is that going to be something that just ratchets people -- Waaait a minute here, this guy's gonna knock out the first guy that ever got aboard?"

Some people could ask this question neutrally, as in, simply, "Will this happen?" (Answer: It's already happening.)

Matthews asks it as in, "When are the people not on MSNBC going to be more overt in their support of Obama?"

Bernie Goldberg:

Liberals, many of them, not all of them, but many of them are obsessed with race. They see everything through a filter of race. So in 2008 there were articles that said, if Barack Obama loses, there is only one reason: racism in America. Now there's a suggestion if he's not reelected, it could be -- right -- because of racism in America.

Read more: more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:46 AM | Comments (151)
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Happy Tuesday.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings got $9.3 million last year for being a huge screw-up. Netflix stock dropped 77% amid Hastings' failed attempt to spin off the company's DVD rental business and to implement a fee increase.

A group of venture capitalists are, according to rumors, announcing a new private space program today, with the aim of mining an asteroid or asteroids in space. Big unanswered legal question: can people own objects in space?

The EEOC has ruled that gender-identity discrimination is prohibited under Title VII. The ruling will be binding on the EEOC and all federal departments and agencies.

Californians will vote on a ballot measure in November that would abolish the death penalty and set the maximum sentence under California law as life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Game developers adjust to digital distribution, as game publishers, hardware makers, and retail stores have a collective freak-out.

Oh, and it is another primary day. Delegates from New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut are up for grabs.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (360)
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