I'll bet Alexis de Tocqueville is rolling in his grave. Sheesh.
Michelle has more, "Creepy video: DNC propaganda clip asserts that “we” all “belong to” govt; Mitt Romney responds" (via Memeorandum).
Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education - from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Among the many magazines that were battered by the recession, few survived such a precarious financial state as Garden & Gun.Continue reading.
In 2009, the two-year-old Southern lifestyle magazine lost financial support from its first publisher. Its employees, many of whom had relocated from New York City to work here, were left with dwindling buyout packages and the promise of freelance pay. Real estate developers could no longer afford to buy advertisements, and some new prospects said they would not give a cent to the magazine until the owners took “gun” out of its title.
David DiBenedetto, the editor in chief, recalled that when the magazine’s color printer broke, the staff did not have the money to replace it for two months. They had to print out proofs at a nearby Kinko’s.
“You didn’t know if you would be there the next week,” Mr. DiBenedetto said as he picked over a lunch of peach soup, fried green tomatoes and catfish at Charleston’s Husk restaurant. He and his wife moved here from New York so he could work at Garden & Gun. “You just didn’t know if the lights would be on.”
It did not help that Garden & Gun’s spare layouts and meandering prose differed radically from the shorter, flashier articles many magazines were moving toward to compete with Facebook and Twitter.
But now, its provocative name and contrarian approach seem to be paying off in a struggling magazine industry. The bimonthly won a 2011 American Society of Magazine Editors award for general excellence, and its editors have a three-book deal with HarperCollins to publish a Southern guide, a collection of dog columns and a cookbook.
With advertisers like Audi, Le Creuset and Brooks Brothers on board, the magazine’s owners forecast that it could be profitable for the first time this year. While circulation is slipping across the magazine industry, Garden & Gun’s circulation grew to 237,837 subscribers in December 2011 from 210,172 the year before, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The magazine, based out of a 200-year-old former pharmacy on Charleston’s historic King Street, was founded as what Jessica Hundhausen Derrick, its vice president and brand development director, described as “a love song to the South.”
It included articles about backyard gin makers, woodworkers crafting chairs from whiskey barrels, and Southern produce like Georgia rattlesnake watermelon. Among the lighter pieces by authors like Roy Blount Jr., there were richly detailed articles like the one from a lifelong friend of Eudora Welty describing how the author feared that if her dead mother saw her cook, “she’d weep with shame.”
And to feed advertisers’ anxieties, nearly every issue featured unapologetic articles in praise of hunting. There were essays on quail hunts, hunting clubs and hunting dogs, often written with an emphasis on land preservation and basking in sumptuous photo spreads to rival Vogue or National Geographic.
But the magazine has also taken a very modern approach to publishing. It began the Garden & Gun Club, which offers subscribers retail discounts and access to private concerts and talks. So far, 3,000 subscribers are paying $35 to $500 a year for one of three membership levels.
The magazine is holding 30 events this year, including a “Lowcountry Field Feast” in South Carolina, a golf event in Georgia and a New Orleans beer festival this fall. It also sells its own merchandise, like a limited-edition Garden & Gun hunting tie and, for the coming holidays, a Le Creuset dish in gunmetal gray.
These kinds of initiatives depend heavily on loyal readers, which Garden & Gun has in abundance. Subscribers knock on the door daily to introduce themselves. Readers write in about how they tested the Southern road trips and dive bars the magazine recommended. One reader even threatened to hunt down the editors and shoot them if they stopped publishing — which the editors emphasize was in jest.
Bonds issued by financially frail European countries have largely been on their best behavior in August, but several events in the next two weeks could awaken markets from their summer slumber.Continue reading.
The European Central Bank's governing council meets Thursday, and investors will eye the news conference that follows for details on the size and design of the central bank's proposed bond-purchase program.
Bond sales by some euro-zone countries are set to resume after a break last month, with Spain selling shorter-dated bonds only a few hours before the central-bank meeting.
A decision by the German Constitutional Court on the legality of the euro-zone's permanent rescue fund and parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, both on Sept. 12, will also fight for the attention of market participants. The outcome of the Dutch election remains highly uncertain at a time when investors are looking to politicians for decisive action.
Last, and most important, euro-zone finance ministers will meet Sept. 14. Following the meeting, Spain could well become the fourth country in the euro zone to seek assistance from its neighbors.
All these events are interlinked to some degree, which means that efforts to deal meaningfully with the crisis could still face hurdles.
The Democrats gathering in Charlotte this week are united behind President Obama but more than a little nervous about their November prospects. The thrill of 2008 is gone, replaced by an almost grim determination. The party of hope and change has become the party of grind-it-out, slug-it-out, and hope to win as less awful than Mitt Romney.That is exactly right.
This isn't the way it was supposed to be. The Obama Presidency was going to usher in a new era of long-term Democratic dominance, and the circumstances to make it happen were on their side. Democrats took power in a recession they could pin on Republicans, knowing they could take credit for the inevitable economic recovery and ride that to re-election. Young people went for them 2 to 1 and might have been loyal for decades. It all might have worked had they made the economy their priority.
But this misjudges the modern Democratic Party. Four years ago in Denver, we wrote that the country deserved to know that the Democrats who would really be running the country in 2009 would be named Henry Waxman, John Dingell, John Conyers, David Obey, George Miller, Barney Frank and James Oberstar. Those were—and mostly still are—the liberal barons of the House.
They weren't about to let a crisis go to waste, and so they went about using their accidentally large majorities to drive through a generation of pent-up liberal legislation. Mr. Obama famously let them write the stimulus and health-care bills. Republicans were helpless to stop them for two years. Liberals got nearly everything they wanted—which is what may be their ultimate undoing.
Democrats of the Obama era are united by cultural liberalism, but above all else they agree on the goal of expanding the reach of government. The Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist idea shop of the Clinton years, is moribund. The vanguard of ideas for the Obama White House is the Center for American Progress, which churns out proposals for government to mediate every sphere of economic life...
There’s a choice this election, alright. Which side are you on? If you’re on the side that fantasizes about knocking an 82 year old man off a stage for laughing at your leader, you might want to examine your soul.
With one convention down and one to go, the great game of bounce analysis is afoot. Over the next few days and weeks the media will scour polls to try to figure who “won” the political convention battle.More at the link.
The better question may be how much it all matters in the end.
Conventions are important events in presidential campaigns. They provide each of the two major parties the chance to have the media largely to themselves and lay out their beliefs, as they see them, to the public. And they give the major candidates at least one night where can have an hour or so to speak directly to the American people in a presidential setting – or at least a semi-presidential setting, an arena filled with supporters cheering him on.
And, as we noted on Thursday in this space, when you get inside the numbers using the geographic/demographic Patchwork Nation breakdown of counties, there are some post-convention trends worth watching. In the coming weeks one critical question is whether GOP nominee Mitt Romney can win over voters in Republican-leaning communities like the small-town Service Worker Centers (in red on the map below) and the aging Emptying Nests (in light green). Mr. Romney will need them in November.
But in the end, the conventions are moments that pass. And even though they have migrated closer to the fall in recent years, they still are far enough away from Election Day to allow for plenty of change afterward, particularly in the modern media environment.
Remember the excitement that followed former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech in St. Paul in 2008? It seemed like ancient history by October.
So what’s in the bounce? It can depend a lot on the year and the campaign, but on the whole, the answer is usually less than meets the eye.
On average, Gallup says the typical post-convention bounce is worth about five percentage points. There have been notable exceptions, such as former President Bill Clinton’s 16-point bump after the Democratic convention in 1992, though as most everyone points out, that also followed independent candidate R. Ross Perot dropping out of the race. And in 2004, Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry got a negative bounce after his convention, a net drop of one point.
But more important than any post-convention bounce is a candidate’s ability to maintain or even grow whatever advantage they get out of their week of being front-and-center in the media. And using that measuring stick, the much-discussed bounce seems a bit over rated as recent examples show.
Outraged Michelle Obama is masterminding an elaborate cover-up to prevent a new gay scandal from tarnishing the President, sources tell the Globe in a sensational world exclusive. The furious first Lady has made it her mission to silence author Larry Sinclair, who has written a book called Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, sex, Lies, Murder, insiders reveal In the work, Sinclair, 47, details the sordid fling he claims to have had with Barack Obama in 1999. He also accuses the President of abusing cocaine on at least two occasions. “The people in the background of the Obama Administration have done everything in their power to stop my book,” Sinclair tells Globe.
Democrats have tried to make abortion an issue in this election, and may in their convention this week.That's a devastating editorial, so brutally true, leftists can't even face these facts.
They think the majority of Americans are pro-choice. They think they can paint Republicans as “extreme” for being pro-life. They apparently think Barack Obama is the very picture of moderation on abortion.
Hmm.
Of course, the truth is not quite as convenient as all that.
For one thing, in the latest Gallup poll on the issue, pro-lifers outnumber pro-choicers 50 to 41 percent. And 86 percent of Americans believe abortion should be illegal in the third trimester.
In contrast, many Democrats not only support abortion as Anytime Birth Control – a Get Out of Responsibility Free Card – but partial-birth abortion as well. Partial-birth abortion is an especially late-term procedure in which the baby is delivered up to the head, whereupon the “doctor” proceeds to then suck the brains out of the baby. So, exactly who is extreme on abortion again?
And guess what: President Obama is even more extreme in favoring abortion than that – despite the fact that most African-Americans oppose it and despite the fact that abortion takes a disproportionate toll on the black population: Nationwide, 35 percent of abortion victims are black, while in big cities the rate is much higher. Even that isn’t enough for this president.
While a member of the Illinois state Senate, Mr. Obama actually opposed a bill that would protect babies who are accidentally born through botched abortions.
The so-called “Born-Alive Infant Protection Act” requires that medical care and sustenance be given to such babies, who are, after all, still human beings and continue to draw breath despite the abortionist’s best efforts.
A little-known horror story is that some such children have simply been left to die. Obama claimed in 2008 that he opposed the Illinois bill, which mirrored a federal law, because it didn’t contain a clause expressly protecting the right to an abortion. That claim appears to be false, with reports indicating the Illinois bill, like the federal law, did contain such a clause.
Not even the most virulent pro-abortion organizations opposed the Born Alive bill. But Barack Obama did.
These are unpleasant facts, requiring the most disturbing descriptions, which we take no pleasure in addressing. But we didn’t bring it up. Abortion has been brought up by extremists in the Democratic Party, who believe abortion is every bit the sacrament that they always claimed men would declare it to be if they could get pregnant...
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There is something unusual about the gathering of Democrats in this steamy Southern city, something that may be more significant than just about anything said or done once the convention starts Tuesday.Right.
It's the sense of harmony.
The famously fractious party that tore itself apart in the 1960s and 1970s over civil rights and the Vietnam War, that lost a series of blowout presidential elections in the 1980s and painfully reinvented itself in the 1990s, faces little of the infighting or self-doubt that for decades seemed as much a part of being a Democrat as worshiping FDR or watching the South, a former party bastion, inexorably slip away.
It is not as though President Obama is a shoo-in come November. Democratic strategists believe the election will be hard-fought to the end with, at best, a slight tilt toward the incumbent, thanks to shifting demographics and a narrowly favorable electoral map.
But the party is unified to a rare degree: behind the president and against GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans, to be sure.
The crime was so unimaginably gruesome — an 8-year-old walking home from day camp is abducted by a stranger, then murdered and dismembered — that the child’s parents were too devastated to attend his funeral. That was last summer. Now a year later, the man responsible for depriving young Leiby Kletzky of a life and future has learned his own fate.
The National Geographic Channel said on Friday that Melissa Bachman, an animal hunter who writes for a blog called “Hardcore Huntress,” will no longer be a participant in the coming reality series “Ultimate Survivor Alaska,” after an online petition protesting her involvement received more than 13,000 signatures in less than 24 hours. According to the Hollywood Reporter’s Web site the petition posted on Change.org by Tim Martell, a Florida resident, called for a boycott of National Geographic and stated that the cable channel had abandoned its “traditional stance of conservation and protection” by working with Ms. Bachman, who also has her own Web site that contains hunting videos, tips and a photographic trophy room. “The National Geographic Channel has carefully considered the public discussion of our series on surviving the wilds of Alaska currently in production and premiering sometime next year,” the cable channel said in a statement.Boy, National Geographic caved in seconds flat. That's probably a record. Whoo hoo!
South Plantation High School’s third-string quarterback was warming up on the sideline before the fourth quarter of a recent preseason game, and each pass was quick, concise and purposeful. The quarterback’s nervous mother, Kathleen DiMeglio, was capturing the moment on video from the bleachers. Then, in an instant, the quarterback vanished from the frame, lost amid the sea of white jerseys.Continue reading.
“Where’d she go? Where’d she go? Where’d she go?” DiMeglio said, and then it quickly dawned on her: “Is she going in?”
When the Seminole Ridge Community High School announcer told the crowd Erin DiMeglio was at quarterback, there was little reaction, because the name Erin, when pronounced, does not connote a gender. But then everyone saw her ponytail swaying as she jogged onto the field. Then there was some buzz. Is that the girl? Can she play? Can she throw?
South Plantation Coach Doug Gatewood knew that the answer to all three questions was yes. The one question he did not know the answer to, and did not want to know, was whether she could take a hit. So when DiMeglio dropped back for her first pass, saw no open receivers, and began to roll to her left, Gatewood felt queasy.
“Go down, Rock,” he said quietly. “Go down.”
DiMeglio, who is 5 feet 5 inches and 140 pounds, did not go down, but she did fire a pinpoint pass to a receiver, who turned upfield for a 10-yard gain. Fans cheered. Cheerleaders chanted Erin’s name. Kathleen DiMeglio exhaled.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
This event, observed on video and recounted by Gatewood in an interview, was not a publicity stunt or a tale of a small-town football team with a jersey to spare. South Plantation High is near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., nestled in one of the nation’s high school football hotbeds. The Paladins’ roster is filled with college prospects. The star running back has committed to Miami, and its starting quarterback has offers from Navy and Air Force. And, yes, one of the backup quarterbacks is a girl.
Erin DiMeglio, a 17-year-old senior, was 2 for 3 passing in that scrimmage at Loxahatchee. And on Friday night, she took two snaps in the Paladins’ 31-14 season-opening victory against Nova, handing the ball off both times. She is believed to be the first girl to play quarterback in a Florida high school football game.
With relentless attacks aimed at portraying Vice President Joseph Biden as a gaffe-prone crazy uncle who's hung around the political scene too long, Republicans hope to raise the stature of GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who will debate Biden next month.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Republicans have a new rhetorical punching bag: Vice President Joseph Biden.More at that top link.
With relentless attacks on President Obama's running mate, Republicans hope to raise the stature of GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who will debate Biden next month, and score points in closely contested states such as Ohio, Florida and New Hampshire.
As Democrats prepare for their convention in Charlotte, N.C., the GOP is casting the 69-year-old former Delaware senator as a gaffe-prone crazy uncle who's hung around the political scene too long.
The strategy tries to undermine the Obama campaign's chief surrogate and liaison to white, working-class voters and seniors, influential groups courted aggressively by both parties. At the same time, Republicans hope that sullying Biden's image will help confirm Ryan, the 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman, as a deep thinker destined to take on many of the nation's most pressing challenges.
In an opinion piece published this past week by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson noted that Biden had said the economy felt like "a depression" and he accused the vice president of straying from "the Obama campaign talking points."
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman praised Ryan at last week's Republican convention in Tampa, Fla. "Contrast this to Joe Biden. Vice President Biden has told people out of work to 'just hang in there' — so much for 'hope and change."'
At the GOP convention, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who joined Obama, Biden and House Speaker John Boehner for a round of golf last year, recalled Biden telling him he was a "good golfer. And I played golf with Joe Biden, and I can tell you that is not true, as well as all of other things that he says."
Even unscripted moments have included knocks at Biden.
Actor Clint Eastwood's convention monologue, beside an empty chair, included a swipe at Biden.
"You're crazy, you're absolutely crazy. You're getting as bad as Biden," Eastwood cracked in his made-up conversation with Obama. "Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party. Kind of a grin with a body behind it."
Warning, lots of large photos of breasts at the link, which I recommend not for the usual gawking at breasts, but for the careful contemplation of the expression and demeanor of the various women.Yeah, read it all at the link --- and check out those breasts.
When President Barack Obama emerged from his car in Charlottesville, Va., to address a crowd of 7,000 mostly college kids Wednesday afternoon, he asked longtime friend Valerie Jarrett: "Why am I having a short day?"I love that quote from Mitch McConnnell. And on the president's social graces, the White House admits "The One's" an asshole and snob who couldn't care less about building coalitions, even if it takes work and compromise.
Mr. Obama was unhappy there weren't more events for him to make his case for re-election. "There should be no short days," he said.
As Mr. Obama heads to the Democratic National Convention next week, the biggest change from his campaign four years ago is reflected in that complaint. The president is having to work more relentlessly to stay in the White House than he did to get there in the first place, and he knows it.
Mr. Obama arrives in Charlotte, N.C., with polls tightening and the economy far from recovery. When he accepts his party's nomination Thursday, Americans will see a charismatic figure much as they did four years ago, and one who, polls say, is more well-liked personally than is his GOP foe, Mitt Romney.
They will also see a more worried politician, who publicly insists he will win his re-election while privately he concedes he knows he could lose. His job-approval ratings have struggled to cross the magic 50% line. Advisers say he is keenly aware of the tough environment.
"He knows it's his last election," says Ms. Jarrett, who is one of his senior advisers. "He won't look back and think he could have done more."
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, says the president faces a tougher election because of a shortage of bipartisan achievements, arguing Mr. Obama backed away from big potential budget and tax deals with Republicans. "He was deeply disappointing," Mr. McConnell said in an interview. "He was not the adult you would expect in the White House.…The president's campaign slogan is, 'It's not my fault.'"
Over his first term, Mr. Obama, 51 years old, has fundamentally shifted his view of modern presidential power, say those who know him well. He is now convinced the most essential part of his job, given politically divided Washington, is rallying public opinion to his side.
As a result, if he wins a second term, Mr. Obama plans to remain in campaign mode. "Barack is grayer, but he's wiser from the battles," says Charles Ogletree, a friend and one of Mr. Obama's professors at Harvard. "This time Barack will use the bully pulpit."
The White House declined a request to interview Mr. Obama.
The president views a second term in some ways as a second chance, an opportunity to approach the office differently, according to close aides. He would like to tackle issues such as climate change, immigration, education and filibuster reform.
He has told some aides that a sizable mistake at the start of his administration was his naiveté in thinking he could work with Republicans on weighty issues. "He's not cynical, because he still gets disappointed," one adviser says. "But he won't make that mistake again."
Still, even some people close to the president acknowledge he missed bridge-building opportunities, given his personal style and aversion to the traditional political niceties that can nurture relationships in D.C. circles.
The president's team is concerned about the lack of enthusiasm, particularly among young voters and Hispanics—both central to Mr. Obama's strategy. Mr. Obama is trying to energize the Democratic base with tough talk about Mr. Romney and the GOP. He recently launched an effort to rally college students in battleground states.The poor boy.
On Wednesday in Charlottesville, after addressing the crowd, mostly students from the University of Virginia, he went online to Reddit.com, a website popular among young people and the tech cognoscenti, and participated in an "Ask Me Anything" question-and-answer session.
"This is a different Barack Obama at this stage," one senior adviser says. "Last time, he thought Hillary Clinton had been his toughest opponent and that the heavy lifting was behind going into the general election." This time, he "understands that—whether Mitt Romney is the greatest candidate or not—the dynamics in this country make victory a harder prospect."
Mr. Obama arrived at the White House in January 2009 with strong Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a cache of political capital based on his promise to be a consensus-builder. He netted several big legislative achievements, including an economic-stimulus package and overhauls of financial regulations and health care.
But once in the White House, Mr. Obama struggled to find bipartisan consensus on the tough economic issues he inherited, and strained to maintain the connection he established with voters in 2008. He has had his share of legislative and national-security successes but also a host of battles and losses. In his passage of health-care overhaul, victory came after protracted, messy fights that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and closed-door dealings that hurt his standing with voters.
Republicans leveled the field in the 2010 midterm elections by taking a majority in the House and narrowing Democrats' majority in the Senate. It was clear Mr. Obama had lost some of his connection with voters.
By January 2011 Mr. Obama's advisers were holding focus groups twice a week, a former senior White House official said, and test-driving phrases and policies aimed at resonating with key voting groups.
Mr. Obama is particularly bothered that Republicans and some business leaders have painted him as antibusiness. He argues privately that he hasn't gotten proper appreciation for his work in pulling businesses, particularly the financial sector, out of the recession's ditch. "They say I don't get it, but I'm the one who saved it," Mr. Obama complained to a close ally after the 2010 midterm vote.
John Engler of the Business Roundtable, and former GOP governor of Michigan, said Mr. Obama's efforts to help business have been offset by some policies that have been harmful, citing parts of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul. He said senior administration officials have made substantial efforts to reach out to business in recent years, including a call to him this week about issues like export control. But, he said, "There's been some disconnect on the follow-through."
To underscore their contention that Mr. Obama doesn't understand the private sector, Republicans have seized on a remark the president made in July, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Obama aides say the line has been taken out of context, as it was made after a reference to government investment in infrastructure such as roads and bridges.
After failing to achieve a sweeping bipartisan debt deal that summer—and then, watching as a smaller compromise struggled through the Republican House—Mr. Obama's new view of his campaign and presidency emerged, aides say: He decided to focus largely on re-election. David Axelrod, a longtime adviser, recalled Mr. Obama phoning him to say, "From here on out, I have to take my case to the American people."What total buttfreak asshole.
In a sense, Mr. Obama is doubling down on his well-documented distaste for socializing with lawmakers and nurturing personal relationships with Washington insiders. Allies and foes alike say this tendency may have made his road tougher because he never established a rapport with Republican leaders.
Mr. Obama, for instance, rarely opens up his golf foursome to anyone outside his close friends and aides, and hasn't hosted members of Congress at Camp David. Both are tools that previous presidents used to mix business and pleasure. Mr. Obama, in contrast, prefers to spend social time with family and close friends.
His aides say that socializing with Republicans would have made no difference anyway, given their intent on unseating him. During his first year, Mr. Obama held occasional Wednesday-night receptions for members of Congress. "But he stopped those niceties because they didn't make a difference when Republicans' only goal was defeating him," an adviser says.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It was the promise that first brought Barack Obama to national attention, and the one that his presidency has most conspicuously been unable to fulfill — the hope of national unity.Yeah, ain't that rich, coming from the Blamer-in-Chief.
"There's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America," Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate and relatively unknown outside Illinois, declared in his keynote speech to the Democratic convention in 2004.
That speech — and the image it created of a political leader with potential to reach across partisan bounds — formed the springboard that helped Obama make the improbable leap from freshman senator to the Oval Office just four years later. Against the backdrop of deep partisan division during George W. Bush's presidency, many voters saw a potential healer in the young, biracial candidate who had spent limited time as a member of the deeply unpopular Washington political elite.
Today, as he prepares to accept his party's nomination for a second term, 3 1/2 years in office have ground away much of that nonpartisan aura, leaving behind a deeply polarized view of the nation's 44th president.
Many Republicans denounce Obama as a "socialist." They express fears that he seeks to radically transform the country. Polls repeatedly have shown Republican voters expressing pessimism about the country's future and worrying that the U.S. has been set on a path toward decline.
At the same time, despite complaints from the left about issues as diverse as the war in Afghanistan, which he has pursued, and efforts to cap greenhouse gases, which he has not, Obama has retained strong support within his own party.
As measured by Gallup, his job approval during most of his tenure among members of his own party has surpassed that of any Democratic president since John F. Kennedy.
The partisan gap in views of Obama is among the largest in modern history, only exceeded — and then just barely — by the division over Bush.
Republicans have sought to exploit a shift in Obama's public image. His rival, Mitt Romney, seldom lets a speech go by without criticizing Obama as a "divider."
Ironically, however, if Obama wins a second term, a shift toward greater partisanship that began a year ago may well prove the single most important reason why — the key to his recovery from near-collapse last summer.
Obama portrays his failure to bridge the partisan gap as among his biggest frustrations in office.
"I haven't been able to change the atmosphere here in Washington to reflect the decency and common sense of ordinary people — Democrats, Republicans and independents — who I think just want to see their leadership solve problems," he said earlier this summer in an interview with CBS correspondent Charlie Rose. "And, you know, there's enough blame to go around for that.
"I think there is no doubt that I underestimated the degree to which in this town politics trumps problem-solving," Obama added.
Newt blasts the news media bias on Republicans and abortion by masterfully highlighting the extreme views of Democrats on abortion, saying there is no way they could defend that position if the media spent as much time explaining that as they do trying to vilify Republicans. Bam!Watch it at the link.
Note how Tom Friedman won’t even defend that position when challenged by Newt...
Mr. Romney is running closely with Mr. Obama in most national polls, but the story is different in several states that will decide the race for the necessary 270 electoral votes. Many polls in those states show Mr. Obama holding an advantage over Mr. Romney as the Democrats prepare to open their convention on Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C. In a Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll released just over a week ago, Mr. Obama had a six-point advantage over Mr. Romney in Ohio for the second month in a row.Here's the poll, "Ryan Micro-Bump In Florida, Wisconsin, But Not Ohio, Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times Swing State Poll Finds." One thing highlighted there not highlighted by the Times: "Independent voters tip to Romney 48 - 43 percent."
To give a sense of Mr. Romney’s challenge: he could win Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia — all carried by Mr. Obama in 2008 — and still fall short without Ohio and its 18 electoral votes.
No Republican in modern times has reached the White House without carrying Ohio, and the alternatives strike fear into Mr. Romney’s quickly expanding team in the state.If Romney does take Ohio, expect the left to mount an all-out legal challenge to the results. The hate-bloggers at Booman Tribune have that, the assholes: "Stealing the Election." (Via Memeorandum.)
I’m told by a few that Fluke’s public remarks are heavily orchestrated, thus the reason she dodged open discussion at#RNC2012 w dissenters.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 1, 2012
Loesch isn’t surprised that Fluke has not agreed to a debate.Sandra Fluke is a kept woman. Her entire public charade has been a top Democrat Party political production. Sure, it's propaganda. But at base Fluke can't talk to Dana Loesch because she --- just like any other ethically bankrupt pro-abort progressive --- can't defend the left's moral abomination of the abortion holocaust industry. It's as simple as that. The left is not about "choice." They are about killing the innocent. It's the biggest stain on America since the Jim Crow segregation. But that we overcame. Where we had once reached a high point of moral decency in working to desegregate and guarantee equal justice for all, the left has spent four decades expanding the immoral atrocity of abortion, with today's Democrat Party platform abandoning it's not-so-long-ago purported commitment to making baby-killing exceedingly rare. Now no one even attempts to cover up left-wing infanticide. It's late-term abortions all the way, and nothing's going to stop me! My body. My choice. My dead baby.
“If Sandra Fluke is going to come here and talk about women’s issues, then why not talk to actual conservative women about women’s issues?” Loesch told The Daily Caller. “I mean, that’s the whole point. You can’t just come here and hold a press conference and not take any questions. You can’t just go on MSNBC and say whatever you want. Is she an advocate or propagandist? Which one is she? If she’s an advocate, she’s completely willing to have a discussion on the issues. Democrats don’t speak for women. They don’t speak for me. I would like to hear why she thinks she speaks for all women because she obviously does not.”
“She hasn’t shown any desire to listen to what conservative women have to say and why they’re happy with the Republican Party and why they are voting for Republicans,” Loesch continued. “She thinks that the Democrats have a patent on women’s issues? Here you have the Obama White House which has actual pay inequality and here you have the Obama White House which removed the sovereignty women have over their own body and then there’s this unelected board for Medicare that’s not regulated by HHS? Where is she on those issues if she’s such a women’s advocate.”
Because Fluke is “not willing to engage on the issues,” Loesch said that “signals to me that she’s not an advocate but she’s a propagandist.”
“I’m genuine,” Loesch said. “I want a genuine discussion. I don’t understand why Democrat women — when they claim to speak for all women — why they’re stopping this very important discussion.”
“Is she afraid to be challenged on the ideas?” Loesch added. “That’s what it signals to me is that she’s unwilling to actually engage in a conversation with real conservative women. Is it because she’s afraid and doesn’t have the strength of her own conviction? That says to me quite a lot. I’m willing to put it on the line, why isn’t she?”
Loesch said she thinks Fluke is nothing more than a creation made by President Barack Obama as part of an effort to push liberal politics. “I don’t know of any other ‘private citizen’ who is represented by the Knickerbocker PR firm in Washington, D.C., which happens to be run by Anita Dunn, Barack Obama’s former communications director,” Loesch said. “I don’t know any private citizen who just happens to have that affiliation. This was an entirely fabricated narrative from the Democrats and they needed a face to put on it and so Sandra Fluke was the face that they put on it. I want to know if she’s woman enough to come talk to me.”
Fluke has not responded to a request for comment from The Daily Caller about Loesch’s challenge either.
In the October issue, Vanity Fair special correspondent Maureen Orth reports that in 2004 Scientology embarked on a top-secret project headed by Shelly Miscavige, wife of Scientology chief David Miscavige, which involved finding a girlfriend for Tom Cruise. According to several sources, the organization devised an elaborate auditioning process in which actresses who were already Scientology members were called in, told they were auditioning for a new training film, and then asked a series of curious questions including: “What do you think of Tom Cruise?” Marc Headley, a Scientologist from age seven, who says he watched a number of the audition videotapes when he was head of Scientology’s in-house studio, tells Orth, “It’s not like you only have to please your husband—you have to toe the line for Scientology.” Both Nicole Kidman and Penélope Cruz ran afoul of Scientology and David Miscavige, according to another former Scientologist. “You can’t do anything to displease Scientology, because Tom Cruise will freak out,” Headley says. (Scientology representatives deny that any such search took place and have dismissed several of the story’s sources as disgruntled apostates. David Miscavige and Tom Cruise declined to be interviewed.)Definitely bizarre.
According to Orth, Nazanin Boniadi, an Iranian-born, London-raised actress and Scientologist, was selected and dated Cruise from November 2004 until January 2005. Initially she was told only that she had been selected for a very important mission. In a month-long preparation in October 2004, she was audited every day, a process in which she told a high-ranking Scientology official her innermost secrets and every detail of her sex life. Boniadi allegedly was told to lose her braces, her red highlights, and her boyfriend. According to a knowledgeable source, she was shown confidential auditing files of her boyfriend to expedite a breakup. (Scientology denies any misuse of confidential material.) The source says Boniadi signed a confidentiality agreement and was told that if she “messed up” in any way she would be declared a Suppressive Person (a pariah and enemy of Scientology).
Lauren Booth spoke at the Ar-Raham Mosque in Fontana, CA, 7/20/2012, and spewed so much hatred no one would believe it if it wasn't on film - Nobody from the Mosque was the least bit fazed or embarrassed.
Lauren Booth's hate speech lies were spread out among the Jews, Israelis, Americans, Christians, and Zionists. The Muslim Americans at the Mosque loved the message. Watch the video and come to your own conclusions."
The young man staggered down a city street as blood flowed from a puncture wound. The weapon used in the steely attack — an ice pick — was sticking out of his lower back.That's gotta be a gnarly way to go, like Trotsky, getting hammered in the back of the skull with an ice-axe.
The scene was reminiscent of an era in the 1930s and ’40s when members of a notorious Brooklyn murder syndicate left a trail of bodies riddled with ice-pick holes. This attack, however, was set in modern-day New York City, specifically, on Aug. 21, at 4:20 p.m. in the Norwood section of the Bronx.
While guns top the list of weapons used in violent assaults, every so often, a crime is committed with a weapon that is suggestive of a different era and seems mystifyingly out of place in the New York City of today.
One such weapon is the ice pick — often associated with the 1940 murder of the Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky: He was killed with an ice pick’s cousin, an ice ax, while he was in exile in Mexico, by an assassin who, acting on the orders of Joseph Stalin, crept up behind Trotsky and slammed the ice ax into his skull.
“There is no prohibition right now against carrying an ice pick in New York City,” said City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the Public Safety Committee, “which is interesting because I don’t know of any legitimate use for an ice pick.”
“I think the ice pick went the way of the milkman,” he added.
Not so. Plenty of hardware stores around the city still sell ice picks.
At NHS Hardware on Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx, a worker, Jose Santana, strode toward the back of the store and grabbed a $3.89 model, whose wrapper said that it was of “professional quality” and “high carbon steel,” from a display of ice picks hanging from a peg.
“There are some weird people looking for this,” Mr. Santana said with a hint of a smile. “It’s weird, no?” ....
The ice pick never completely disappeared as an implement of crime, but it seems to have rebounded as one recently.
Late last year, a Bronx man, John Martinez, was dubbed the Ice-Pick Bandit by prosecutors and the news media after being caught and convicted of a series of robberies and burglaries. On separate occasions, Mr. Martinez brandished an ice pick and terrorized six women, stealing cash, jewelry and cellphones. In one case, Mr. Martinez threatened to stab a woman’s child if she did not hand over more cash.
The recent attack in the Bronx unfolded when an unidentified man, apparently lying in wait inside a parked car, ambushed two young men, ages 19 and 20, on the corner of East 208th Street and Perry Avenue. A witness described seeing one victim with the ice pick jutting out of his back.
The attacks were not fatal, though one victim was seriously injured. A police spokesman said the motive remained unknown and no arrests had been made.
Under the city’s consumer-protection and public-safety laws, it is illegal to sell a box cutter to anyone under 21. Retailers who break the law face a maximum $500 fine for each violation.
When asked whether the law also applied to ice picks, Mr. Vallone said it did not — and then got to thinking: Why not? The question prompted him to draw up a bill that would amend the law to include a ban on the sale of ice picks to anyone under 21. He said his committee would probably hold a public hearing on the proposal in the next several months.
“I would entertain expanding it further, banning all public possession, once we learn, during the hearing process, whether there are any legitimate uses in this day and age for an ice pick,” he said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
Mann Rosa, 32, who lives on Perry Avenue about a block from the scene of the recent attack, said ice picks were back in vogue among street gangs all across the city.
“The ice pick, from what I know, is the new thing,” Mr. Rosa said, noting how easy it was to buy and conceal. “It’s definitely the new wave.”
Can a vice presidential candidate be the decisive factor in a presidential race?We can do this.
Most analysts will tell you that no presidential contest has ever been decided by a vice presidential pick. But Paul Ryan is putting that record to the test.
Since picking Ryan, Mitt Romney's poll numbers have risen, the GOP has unified and Romney has added the dimension of entitlement reform to his campaign.
And the Obama campaign seems worried enough that it put out an Internet ad attacking Ryan almost exclusively.
History weighs against Ryan having a big effect. In 1988 Lloyd Bentsen, vice presidential candidate for Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, destroyed Republican George H.W. Bush's running mate, Dan Quayle, in one of the most lopsided debates ever. Yet Dukakis lost to Bush.
Some delegates still think Ryan's impact will be sizable.
"Ryan is a real, true asset to Romney," said Will Deschamps, a delegate and state chairman of Montana. "Watch how they react between themselves. They seem very comfortable together."
On Aug. 9, the day before Romney announced Ryan as his running mate, the Real Clear Politics average of national polls showed President Obama leading 48.4%-44%. Since then, his lead has shrunk to 46.8%-45.7%.
"Maybe Donny Ray Williams is available to speak at the DNC."No doubt.
"Been unable 2 watch any RNC convention "speeches"...but did Clint Eastwood really make the slitting throat motion...meant for our POTUS???"And then all the progressive douchebags yammer, "He did, he did. Call the Secret Service!"
"Wow Is Twitchy defending Eastwood gesture..."as he revealed his secret disire to kill the POTUS" ? No violence/death threat there, right?"Secret desire. Okay.
Both Fox News and MSNBC have experienced reporters in the field who stay neutral even when their anchors let loose. The NBC network’s anchors keep their opinions to themselves, and so do its star reporters, like Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd, who appear on both cable and network shows, and somehow skillfully navigate past the rockier shoals.Umm, no.
MSNBC has a growing cast of anchor-bloviators — hosts like Martin Bashir, Tamron Hall and, of course, Al Sharpton, who rant and then invite like-minded guest commentators to assure them that they are right.Read it all at the link.
Chris Matthews, who hosts a Sunday talk show syndicated by NBC and a daily MSNBC show, seemed determined during this convention to outflank his most outspoken rivals, including Mr. Sharpton.
He started with a bruising harangue against Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee Chairman, that made even his hosts on “Morning Joe” wince. Mr. Matthews looked almost thuggish on Wednesday night when the Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, 67, speaking from the din of the convention floor, complained she couldn’t hear his question.
“You can’t hear me?” he said. “Well, that’s convenient.”
On Thursday, Mr. Matthews fulminated against Paul Ryan’s — admittedly misleading — assertion that Mr. Obama did nothing to prevent the closing of a GM plant in 2008. Then Fox News attacked media figures who attacked Mr. Ryan. CNN took the harder course of parsing the entire issue: The correspondent Tom Foreman gave a long, industrious analysis that explained where and how Mr. Ryan finessed the facts.
MSNBC talk shows are to network newscasts what blogs are to newspaper columns, shaggier and often less considered. And increasingly, viewers, like readers, have a hard time distinguishing one from the other. But it’s all that attitude on MSNBC that raises eyebrows.
Three violent altercations caught on tape involving Los Angeles Police Department officers have rekindled the long-running debate about LAPD use of force and are shaping up to be a significant test for Chief Charlie Beck.More at that top link.
All three incidents occurred during seemingly routine calls and inexplicably turned violent.
Several weeks ago, a cellphone video showed four police officers tackling a 20-year-old Venice skateboarder they said was resisting arrest. One officer hit him in the face.
This week, videotape emerged in which two LAPD officers in the San Fernando Valley were shown slamming a handcuffed woman to the ground before appearing to give one another fist bumps. The woman, a nurse who was pulled over for holding a cellphone while driving, suffered large bruises to her face and body.
But the most serious incident came to light late Thursday, when LAPD officials revealed that a woman had died during a confrontation in July outside her South Los Angeles home. Police said the woman had gone to a police station to drop off her children because she said she could not take care of them. Police returned to her house to arrest her on suspicion of child endangerment.
"Each incident is disturbing," said Police Commission member Richard E. Drooyan on Friday. "In each of these cases, we are talking about different places in the department with different races and genders involved."
Beck spent Thursday night moving through the city and talking to officers about the incidents.
"I was in the field last night and visited half a dozen police stations," he said. "I looked hundreds of police officers in the eye as I discussed their responsibilities. I have faith in them."
Hegel would have well understood one of the most interesting contemporary developments: the old liberal establishment is shrinking, both in numbers and in confidence, and their political/ideological opponents are growing. Several smart people have noticed the extraordinary depth of the conservative political team, many of whose members were on display in Tampa this week. The Ryans and the Romneys, the Christies and the Haleys, the Loves and the Rubios, the Brewers and the Walkers, on and on. They have a much clearer vision of the real world, and they accordingly have more realistic political approaches than those on the left, who are trapped in a world that no longer exists.
Here’s another way to grasp the dialectical process: look at Wisconsin. Long considered one of the wackier leftist places in America, it is now the cradle of creative conservatives. The Progressive mission known as the “Wisconsin Idea” is politically and intellectually dead and buried. Wisconsin now votes for Paul Ryan and Scott Walker (and probably Tommy Thompson in a couple of months).
If you’re one of those leftists, unable to sort out how the world works nowadays, and unable to win an honest debate with your political and intellectual opponents, it makes you very angry, and you lash out at them with a violence that often surprises observers who are less engaged in the political or intellectual wars. The left has died as an intellectual force worth taking seriously. Its mission belongs to another time. It is reduced to fighting for political power alone, and its weapons are what we recently called “the politics of personal destruction.” It’s the only way they can hope to win. None of us should be surprised when the leftists accuse the righties of pushing old women off of cliffs, or murdering cancer-afflicted employees, or waging war on women, and so forth. They have to destroy their opponents one by one. They no longer have a “movement” of any significance.
That’s what happens when you become an anachronism...
Several thousand workers at a platinum mine, in the town of Marikana, northwest of Johannesburg, went on strike this month, demanding a raise. The mine is owned by Lonmin, a company based in London. The men were members of a radical, breakaway union whose leaders were trying to drum up membership and had urged workers to strike to get higher pay and better working conditions. They occupied a rocky hill, armed themselves with machetes, spears and clubs, and chanted war songs and anthems from the struggle against apartheid.RTWT.
For days, the authorities watched warily as the crowd grew more militant. Two police officers were hacked to death, and eight other people were killed in violent clashes. On Aug. 16, the police were given the order to move in. The police said that they tried to chase away the miners with rubber bullets and stun grenades, but that they were forced to resort to live ammunition when the miners surged at them. The police said they retrieved six guns from the scene, including one that belonged to one of the dead police officers.
The bloodshed, so reminiscent of the horror of the apartheid-era police force’s firing on protesters, stunned the nation. The government, trade unions and the opposition roundly condemned the violence, and President Jacob Zuma set up an independent commission to investigate the killings and gave it broad powers to subpoena testimony.
The police involved in the shooting could still face criminal charges as well. The inquiry set up by Mr. Zuma has the power to refer cases for prosecution, and it is expected to deliver a report in five months.
"Walkin' On The Sun"
John Sexton, at Hot Air, "University of Chicago postpones course on the problem of whiteness..."
Mary Chastain, at Legal Insurrection, "‘Deplatforming Works’: Ocasio-Cortez Celebrates Fox News and Tucker Carlson Parting Ways..."The Other McCain, "How to Translate Bidenese..."