August 24, 2012
— LauraW A tweet from CBS's White House reporter this morning.
Obama Campaign says Romney's career at Bain Capital "was not about creating jobs, it was about creating profits."
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 24, 2012
I'll leave the logical smackdown to you in comments, darling Morons.
Can you imagine Clinton, or even Carter, coming out and making such an idiotic statement? No way.
But these are not your ordinary liberals. These are Obama Liberals, the most caring, supercharged liberals; the razor's edge, the smartest people in the room.
Obama Liberals have the cheek to come out, in public, and essentially proclaim "We have no idea where all the money or jobs come from!! WHEEE!!"
They are pandering to their base, which is dumb people.
The reason they think they can get away with saying this stupid thing, in public, is that they believe most Americans are too dim to spot the error of understanding in that statement.
Therefore the statement, as well as the expectation that no one will point out that it is in fact f*cktarded, is an implicit insult to the intelligence of all Americans.
And fortunately, that is where their main ignorance lies. They do not understand you, America.
UPDATE FROM EMAIL
John E. writes:
The other part that I take away from Obama's statement is that he believes the word "profits" is widely regarded as a "bad word", but of course it isn't. This a pretty obvious anti-capatilist view that is only held by his most collectivist supporters, and not by the American public. The mask slips yet again.
Yep.
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— Gabriel Malor Happy Friday, at last.
Yesterday, some DHS employees sued DHS and J-Nap claiming that the DHS DREAM Memo is unconstitutional. If you're interested, their complaint is here (PDF). I'm gonna go ahead and say this one gets circular-filed for lack of standing.
In the WSJ yesterday, Gov. Romney returned to the theme that his time at Bain Capital prepared him to tackle the economy's challenges.
Lance Armstrong has a doozy of a statement at his website.
Eugene Volokh dug up some old legal precedents showing that Akin's "legitimate rape" belief has been around (and rejected by right-thinking folk) for a very long time.
And how 'bout some Friday funny? This is why studying those SAT words was so important: weather girl shoots down accidental advance from TV anchor -- "You just made the blooper reel."
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August 23, 2012
— Maetenloch
Dream Team: The 10 Best Conservative Columnists
Okay I'm down with 8 of these but I just don't consider David Brooks or Peggy Noonan (post-2000) particularly conservative or all that great. Falling for Obama in 2008 ought to put you in the cornfield of conservative punditry for a good decade or so.
And frankly I can't recall a single memorable George Will column in years. According to hearsay he's focusing these days on the grandeur of baseball and why blue jeans and football should be banned.
The Election According to Amazon Sales
Even NY is only 56% blue while DC is the bluest in the country with 74%.
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— Slublog Sean Bielat, candidate for Congress in Massachusetts 4th Congressional district, participated in a conference call this evening with a number of bloggers. In 2010, Bielat ran against Barney Frank. Unfortunately, Frank won that race but clearly he was scarred by the experience of actually facing a competent opponent and recently announced his retirement from Congress.
Faced with an empty office in DC, panicky Massachusetts Democrats hit the "DEFAULT" button and scrounged up...a Kennedy. Joseph P. Kennedy, III to be exact. Like Howie says, this is Peace Corps vs. Marine Corps. In one corner, a former Marine, businessman and guy who did build that. In the other, a...guy with a famous name who regards the press the same way a vampire looks at the sun.
In the call, Bielat talked about his commitment to constitutional values, fiscal responsibility and economic growth. He framed this election as a choice between "the visions of government presented by Mitt Romney and those of Barack Obama." He said that Obama has criticized the Paul Ryan plan, but hit the SCOAMF for not offering one of his own.
Bielat's district includes Scott Brown's hometown, so this is a winnable race. He has a chance with independents and Brown voters. What he really needs are the resources to run ads in the expensive Boston media market.
In 1979, Roger Mudd asked one of JoJoJo Kennedy's relatives why he wanted to be president. That interview...did not end well. When asked why he wanted to be in Congress, Bielat had a much better answer.
"I got into this in 2010 because like many Americans I was frustrated with what I was seeing in DC," he said. " My congressman was Barney Frank and he had not had a competitive race since 1982 and I saw we had a chance in the 4th district." Bielat gave Frank the most competition he'd had in years, and now says he's running again for the same ideals, but with much more personal motivation.
"I have a nine month old daughter and a two year old son, so for me this idea of making us sustainable for the next generation is important," Bielat said. "We need to change now and part of the way we do that is send people to Washington who arenÂ’t worried about their next election...I will focus on substantive policy issues. If [Kennedy] wants to talk about issues, I want to have that debate."
Bielat struck me as an impressive, serious guy who can win. His opponent is a Kennedy who's not hurting for funds. To compete, Bielat needs our help. So shake those piggy banks and let's make this happen.
Every time one of you donates, a Kennedy's tears waters down their Chivas. Below, a video that shows the difference between a guy running on the hope that voters like his name, and a guy who is running on actual change. Let's do this, morons. more...
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— CAC Tommy Thompson will be the new U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, meaning the Badger state will go from 2 very liberal Democratic Senators to an all-Republican delegation two years. Kohl's decision to retire I suspect reflects a growing reality he'd rather not deal with despite his popularity and tenure: the rapid reddening of Wisconsin.
Thompson has enjoyed a consistent lead over a sluggish Baldwin all year, his numbers dipping only during the nastier parts of his party's primary. He is scoring low-90s numbers amongst Republicans and a clear majority of independents, with a projected electorate of EVEN-to-D+1 (a massive shift from 2008 ), there simply aren't enough Democrats in Madison and Milwaukee to save him (and turnout in Madison won't hurt Tommy as he's only down 10 in the metro area, far closer than Walker or Johnson).
With Nebraska, this makes two solid Republican pickups.
Cool new contest for those really interested in election forecasting: 270towin.com is running a contest in which you submit your projected map of the Presidential race, scoring some sweet cash if you win. The contest, America's Electoral Map, will accumulate projections to generate their final user-submitted map a week before November 6th. Recently, that map has shifted to an Obama lead of 284-254, with the most recent predictions giving Romney Wisconsin, Ohio, and Colorado (scroll over it to see overall vs most recent). Enter, sit back, and use your winnings to buy the bacon of your choice.
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— Ace A statistical tie.
But I came across this from a trusted source: Larry Sabato noted that no incumbent has ever won when tied before Election Day.
"When has an incumbent candidate ever won when he is tied with his challenger on election eve? The answer is never - at least in the age of polling that began in the 1930s," says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.Going over the final polls, he writes in the latest issue of his Crystal Ball e-newsletter, the most impressive finding is that the Gallup poll, for the first time in its seven-decade history, has given its final prediction as a tie: 49 percent for Bush, 49 percent for John Kerry, 1 percent for Ralph Nader and 1 percent divided among the Libertarian, Constitution and other tickets.
One thing, though: Bush did win that election. Well, once we rigged the voting machines in Ohio, I mean.
And according to RCP's poll of polls, he took a lead in August and held it through the election.
Thanks to @justkarl for finding that for me. Thanks for @projectiondesk for the update about the RCP average.
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— Ace So, here's what I've read lately.
Scaramouche. Ehhhh... I kind of liked it but can't recommend it unless you are keenly interested in the French Revolution. It's interesting, but it's not a full-on swashbuckler, or anything close to one. There isn't a lot of swordplay, and unless I'm forgetting something, all but one swordfight (early in the book) takes place off-screen. It's also from that period where novelists seemed to just sort of churn out chapters without worrying about the central narrative arc. Like they just were struck by this idea, then that that one. So the book sort of resembles the haphazard meanderings of real life... which isn't a good thing, necessarily.
Still, it's okay. Maybe Captain Blood will be better.
The Forever War. A classic I'm just now reading. I'm only like six chapters in. Seems good. At the moment it seems to be an update of Starship Troopers but I'm 99% sure, based on what I've read, that there's more to it than just Mobile Infantry suits. Oh, and government-issued pot, and male and female soldiers sleeping together as a common thing. Like, who's sleeping with who tonight? Okay, you'll do.
I'm only on Charon here so don't spoil it.
The Count of Monte Cristo. Supposedly there's this amazing recent translation which re-inserts the censored material (like light Victorian lesbian theming) and scuttles the archaic, stilted English in favor of a vigorous modern prose more like the French Dumas actually wrote in.
It's okay. It's extremely long. I put this down like a month ago and it hasn't beckoned me back. I find myself thinking about the long digressions about post-Napoleonic politics which the Victorians had taken out, but which the fresh translation put back in, and am sort of in favor of the Victorian judgment on this.
It's also a little contrived, and that's despite the fact that something like this really did happen. Dumas ripped the idea off from a policeman's true-crime book he'd read. But his version of the story seems fake.
Maybe any version of the story would seem fake. It's pretty unbelievable.
I'm told that the Count is just major awesome (and it served as the inspiration for The Stars My Destination, of course) but so far I'm not up to the awesome parts. I just got into jail with Dantes, who, by the way, is so naive and dopey I want to punch him in the brain. I don't know if I'm going to wind up finishing this one.
Oh: Over the winter I read Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure tetraology. It's four books, with odd titles, like "The Phnume" or "The Wiggle-waggles."
It's basically got a terrific premise, but then peters out. First he sets you up by describing how awesome a Scout is. A planet trailblazer, a man of action, but also a Renaissance man with training in fifteen different sciences and survival skills.
Then the Scout crash-lands on this planet which is occupied by four different alien races -- none of whom are indigenous to the planet. And each of these races has its own human servitor race -- "sub-men" -- which due to some kind of rubber science not explained, adopts some of the physical characteristics of the alien race they serve.
The great set-up goes almost nowhere, because the only thing he tries to do over four novels is steal or build his own spaceship, to return to earth. After he fails to steal one in the second book, he tries building it in the second two books, and then those books become largely about haggling about prices with engineers, laborers, and bureaucrats. He does move from place to place -- chiefly seeking to build up a cash pile to spend on a spaceship -- but it's pretty episodic and random.
There is a Planet of the Apes type subplot -- the "sub-men" are all convinced by their alien overlords that they were created by the aliens, though there is an occult, suppressed religion that claims humans originated on an entirely different planet -- but the hero actually doesn't really care about this. There is no "Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty alien" sort of rebellion plot. At least not in foreground.
Just a really fun premise, a sci-fi swords & sorcery sandbox for our scout to play in, but doesn't deliver. I guess I have to give it a marginal recommendation because there is scattered fun in it.
I think this premise is so good it must be ripped off and done right.
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— Ace He has this bizarre arch-conservative idea that we get growth and jobs from producing things, rather than restraining and sabotaging production.
Sounds crazy. I'll wait for Paul Krugman to knock holes in it before I accept this preposterous notion.
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— Ace He's doing great. Let's give him four more years.
Household income is down sharply since the recession ended three years ago, according to a report released Thursday, providing another sign of the stubborn weakness of the economic recovery.From June 2009 to June 2012, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 4.8 percent to $50,964, according to a report by Sentier Research, a firm headed by two former Census Bureau executives.
Incomes have dropped more since the beginning of the recovery than they did during the recession itself, when they declined 2.6 percent, according to the report, which analyzed data from the Census BureauÂ’s Current Population Survey. The recession, the most severe since the Great Depression, lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.
Overall, median income is 7.2 percent below its December 2007 level and 8.1 percent below where it stood in January 2000, which was at $55,470, according to the report.
I read Nate Silver's election analyses and used to give him credit for being a liberal-leaning, but still very scientific and sharp, analyst.
However, he keeps on insisting that the economy is some kind of boon to Obama. A small one, but a positive one nevertheless.
He tried to poke holes in that U of Colorado study that predicted Romney would take 320 EVs.
He just can't seem to grasp that the economy is not "slightly positive for Obama" but in fact strongly negative.
It's amusing to watch him wrestle with this very simple badfact.
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— Ace
CDR-M sent that picture. Obviously I wouldn't have bothered with this story -- which basically says "Monday will come, just as you previously thought it would, until a Democratic mayor suggested for 24 hours it might not" -- if I didn't have that picture.
Republican officials say they are moving forward with plans to hold the Republican National Convention on Monday as scheduled, despite an approaching tropical storm.
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