I was camping yesterday morning when a friend alerted me via Twitter on my iPhone there had been a shooting at Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C.Continue reading.
Frightened for my friends, I began scanning Google for news reports. Ten minutes later the first story popped up, stating an FRC security guard had been shot in the arm, and the shooter had been arrested.
A bit relieved, I went ahead with a planned day trip, tuning in to news radio in the truck to keep up with the latest. Nada.
I switched to WLS radio, the Chicago ABC affiliate. More nada.
I thought to myself had this been a shooting at a NARAL or GLAAD headquarters, or at a Planned Parenthood clinic, the journalistic world would have stopped. But because FRC is conservative, a shooting wasn’t so big a deal.
Frank: Last time you were here you didn't get to play your scheduled show here in L.A. so you were gonna play a free show at a Roller Rink, what happened with that?More at Wikipedia.
Wattie: Me and Gary got in a fight and I knocked his front four teeth in. We were still gonna play, we were still pals and stuff, but it cost us $400 to get his face stitched up. Gary had really bad breath, and he was picking on the drummer right, 'cause he was drunk, and he stuck his face near mine. And if I'm drunk, if somebody puts their face near me I'll just hit them, I'm paranoid about that...
(Wattie tells us how Carl "lost" his guitar in Spain: the Exploited did some minor damage and were asked to pay a lot for it. When they refused, the police were called who arrested the band and put them in jail. By then the bill had doubled, the Exploited gave them all the money they had plus Carl's guitar and they got out. He finally got a new guitar after their four shows in L.A.)
Facebook Inc. shares sank 6.3% to a record low on Thursday, falling below $20 a share on a day when some early investors were allowed to unload their stakes, adding further pressure on the beaten-down stock.More at the link.
Rules expired Thursday that had restricted some early investors from selling down their stakes after Facebook's initial public offering. More than 271 million Facebook shares became eligible for sale Thursday, though holders could also choose to keep some, or all, of their stakes. Any additional shares would add to the 421 million already in circulation.
Facebook declined $1.33 to $19.87 on the Nasdaq Stock Market at 4 p.m. Thursday, after hitting a record intraday low of $19.69.
The prior closing low of $20.04 was hit Aug. 2. Upward of 141 million shares had traded by 3:30p.m. New York time, more than triple the stock's daily average over the past 30 days, according to the WSJ Market Data Group. That was greater than the full-day activity in all but two sessions: the first two days Facebook was public and the day after it reported second-quarter results in July.
"It's basically supply and demand," said Evercore Partners analyst Ken Sena. "You have a lot of supply of shares coming to market, so even to those who feel that the stock is priced attractively at these levels, there's no reason to step in and buy."
The London Games have gone down in history as the most politically correct Olympics ever. Moreover, it was political correctness in its worst form — on the verge of fascism.I blogged a few of these example, but continue reading.
First, the leadership of the Greek Olympic Committee removed triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou from the games for the following joke she made on Twitter: "With so many Africans in Greece … the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!"
The joke is certainly offensive, but ruining someone's life over this matter — someone who has spent her whole life preparing for this competition — is pure fascism. It is the Ministry of Love punishing thoughtcrime.
In another case, a member of the German rowing team, Nadja Drygalla, was forced to drop out of the competition because of a comment that was made on Facebook. But she had nothing to do with it. It was her boyfriend, a former neo-Nazi, who complained of having to travel on a train "with blacks and Pakistanis."
Maybe the Olympic Ministry of Truth can answer one question for me: Why should Nadja Drygalla answer for the contents of her boyfriend's Facebook page?
What's next?
Disqualifying an athlete for the actions of his father? Or because another athlete's grandfather served in the SS? Or maybe because somebody's great-grandfather suppressed the Sepoy Rebellion in India?
But the most surprising aspect is the shameless double standards of the International Olympic Committee, or IOC. The Ministry of Love, standing by with a hot iron ready to dole out punishment for having politically incorrect boyfriends, turns out to be surprisingly tolerant of Nazism of another variety.
Take, for example, when several Lebanese Olympic athletes refused to train in the same room as Israelis. That is much worse than a tasteless joke on Twitter. It's pure racism. The IOC should have clearly said to the Lebanese athletes, "Your demand is contrary to the very spirit of the Olympic Games, so we are excluding you from the competition."
But instead of doing that, the committee simply put up a partition in the training room to appease the Lebanese racists and ensure that their tender feelings weren't offended....
MARIKANA, South Africa — The police fired on machete-wielding workers engaged in a wildcat strike at a platinum mine here on Thursday, leaving a field strewed with bodies and a deepening fault line between the governing African National Congress and a nation that, 18 years after the end of apartheid, is increasingly impatient with deep poverty, rampant unemployment and yawning inequality.Also at Guardian UK, "South African police shoot dead striking miners."
In a scene replayed endlessly on television that reminded some South Africans of the days when the police of the apartheid government opened fire on protesters, heavily armed officers shot into a charging crowd of workers who walked off the job last Friday, demanding higher wages.
The strike has pitted the country’s largest mine workers union, which is closely allied with the governing A.N.C., against a radical upstart union demanding sharp increases in pay and faster action to improve the grim living and working standards for miners.
The strike and the government’s iron-fisted response are emblematic of the frustration with the slow pace of transforming South Africa’s largely white-owned business establishment and the growing perception that the A.N.C. and its allies have become too cozy with big business. As a result, many people here, especially the young, have looked for more radical solutions.
“N.U.M. has deserted us,” said one of the striking workers, who gave his name as Kelebone, referring to the older union, the National Union of Mineworkers, by its abbreviation. “N.U.M. is working with the white people and getting money. They forgot about the workers.”
The five broadcast television networks will be rolling out 23 new one-hour dramas for the upcoming season. That would normally be good business for Hollywood's hometown industry — with bookings for soundstages and plenty of work for the costumers, camera operators and caterers needed to put a show on the air.
But not this year. Just two of the 23 new fall and midseason shows will be shot in Los Angeles County, as cost-conscious producers seek tax-friendly production havens in New York, North Carolina, Georgia and other states.
The exodus has been going on for years, especially in feature film production. But television dramas such as"CSI,""Criminal Minds"and"Desperate Housewives"have long been anchors of Los Angeles' entertainment economy, helping to offset the decade-long slide in moviemaking. One 22-episode-a-year network series has a budget of $60 million and generates 840 direct and indirect jobs, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
That economic bang is beginning to fizzle. Fewer than 10% of new network dramas this season are based in Los Angeles, down from 50% in 2010 and nearly 80% in 2005.
"The loss of hourlong dramas is very significant," said Kevin Klowden, director of the California Center at the Milken Institute, noting that a typical drama shoots for eight to nine months, compared with just six to eight weeks for a film. "This is the heart of television production. If this continues, you're going to see a direct impact on the employment base of Los Angeles."
Though L.A. still hosts the bulk of new half-hour comedies and reality shows, dramas are more prized because they use bigger crews and have bigger budgets. That translates to more spending in the local economy....
New York had a record year for TV production last year and is on track to repeat in 2012. More than half a dozen new fall and midseason network dramas are expected to shoot in New York this season, including the CW's"The Carrie Diaries,"CBS'"Elementary" andABC's"666 Park Avenue."
At least seven new broadcast dramas will be shooting in Canada, includingABC's"Zero Hour," in Montreal, and "Hannibal" and"Beauty and the Beast,"both in Toronto, which also hosts the new drama "The L.A. Complex," about a group of actors trying to make it in Hollywood. Other new dramas are being filmed in North Carolina, Georgia, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Tennessee.
To be sure, creative reasons also factor in the decision-making. It made sense to shoot"Dallas"in Texas because the story is based there. But tax credits offered by Texas were also important, said Michael Robin, an executive producer on the series, who is also a producer on the new cable crime drama "Longmire," which is set in Wyoming but filmed in New Mexico, partly to take advantage of tax credits.
"The cost of producing these shows goes up every year, but the bottom line doesn't," said Robin, who is also producing the new cable drama"Major Crimes"locally. "The tax credits help close the gap."
"The reality is, as long as Sacramento continues to balk at having real incentives, we're going to continue to lose the most lucrative forms of television and film production," said Paul Audley, president of FilmL.A. Inc., the nonprofit group that handles permits for the city and county. "We're losing tens of thousands of jobs to New York."
AMERICA’S WEIMAR MOMENT? Reader Kevin Hedges writes:Fascism.
Many years ago in an undergrad World History course, the professor asserted that German democracy died not in 1933 with Hitler becoming Chancellor but years earlier. It died when roving bands of Brown Shirts beat up Jews in the streets, and the average respectable German citizen responded by looking the other way. I am reminded of that today with the FRC shooting and the MSM pretending it didn’t happen. Leftist shootings, vandalized Chick-fil-As, Black Panthers at voting stations, many, many churches burned and vandalized, media silence and the drumbeat of hate and demonization continues. I honestly wonder if democratic pluralism is dead. Some are openly saying it is. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
When early eyewitness reports — not yet confirmed by the police or the FBI — suggested that the shooter had said disparaging things about FRC’s views, the rhetoric got even crazier. The narrative that has emerged among certain members of the Left goes something like this: When a right-winger shoots a left-winger, the right wing is at fault. And when a left-winger shoots a right-winger, the right wing is also at fault, because people with their views are just asking for it.Yes, but it's the left that almost always does the twisting. Personally, I've never seen such hatred in my entire life. And yes, progressives will blame and attempt to destroy the victim. That's what they do. They have no grace.
Have we really gotten to the point in this country where some of us are willing to legitimize violence this way?
We have to be honest when talking about the motives of any given criminal. There’s no point in trying to hide or ignore them. But can’t we also be honest about the fact that on both sides of the aisle, violence tends to come only from the marginalized and deranged? Pinning the blame for a crime on an entire mainstream movement or belief system is a highly dangerous exercise. It means that when a crime is committed by someone who agrees with you — as will inevitably happen, since criminals come from all backgrounds and belief systems — you then have to quickly twist things around and protect yourself from any possible guilt by association. And if that means blaming the victim, well, so be it.
And so it came to pass, support for retaining the centuries old definition of marriage as one man, one woman, routinely now is labeled as “hate speech” on campuses and increasingly in the liberal-dominated media. Groups which support retaining the definition now are hate groups — with SPLC cited as the authority.PREVIOUSLY: "Depraved Homosexuals Blame Family Research Council for 'Climate of Violence' After Leftist Attempts Massacre."
Chick-fil-A brought to the surface the hysteria. A company whose executives supported retaining the traditional definition of marriage was threatened by politicians with denial of business licenses, its products were called “hate chicken,” its employees were rudely confronted, and protesters outside its stores harassed and belittled those who disagreed. Now Chick-fil-A is being banned from campuses.
And in almost every instance, the justification is that support for retaining the traditional definition of marriage is hate speech, and often the SPLC is cited as the authority because it has designated groups like the Family Research Council as a hate group.
SPLC gave cover to those who use the “hate speech’ and “hate group” labels to shut down political and religious speech, and now it has spiralled out of control.
Yo@ewerickson, a shooting at#FRC HQ was a long time coming. Though I'm surprised the#AFA wasn't 1st. Hate begets hate.#NOH8#Bigotry
— Chase J. (@Way2Blue4You) August 15, 2012
Yes, Family Research Council is a hate group — and calling them such condemns climate of violence FRC has encouraged
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) August 15, 2012
@wiz1965 I DO NOT TOLERATE FUCKING GAY BASHING JESUS FREAKS LIKE YOU &@dloesch & I DO NOT NEED FUCKING JESUS FREAKS TO TOLERATE ME
— JessicaNaomi (@JessicaNaomi828) August 16, 2012
@joemygod who cares what gay basher tyrannical theocRAT@dloesch spews, let her shove her kill gays bible down her own throat & choke on it
— JessicaNaomi (@JessicaNaomi828) August 16, 2012
.@dloesch Do you also condemn the FRC's claim that gay people are inherently mentally ill pedophiles? bit.ly/wKMrjj
— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) August 16, 2012
Let's remember why FRC was labeled a hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center. It wasn't opposition to gay marriage: splcenter.org/get-informed/i…
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) August 15, 2012
@causeofourjoy Hate is hate. And sadly, a lot of "traditional values" groups are simply collections of people who hate.
— John Aravosis (@aravosis) August 15, 2012
The information is still coming in, but someone apparently started shooting in the lobby of the religious right hate group Family Research council in Washington, DC today. A security guard was unfortunately wounded.Continue reading.
Conservatives, such as CNN's Erick Erickson, are already trying to tie Democrats to the attack. Why? Because people on the left had the audacity to challenge the Family Research Council's decades of hateful and bigoted attacks against gay and lesbian Americans. And other conservatives are calling for the Southern Poverty Law Center to no longer list the FRC as a hate group because of today's violence. That would be wrong.
Because of conservatives trying to take political advantage of the shooting I'm now forced to recap just how hateful and bigoted an organization the Family Research Council really is. I'd have preferred to have avoided that this so soon after the attack, but conservatives leave us no choice.
...liberals who have often jumped to the conclusion that all Tea Partiers are violent racists because of stray comments from extremists need to remember that such tactics cut both ways. Those who have repeatedly cautioned conservatives to mind their tongues and be careful about using language that would delegitimize their opponents now must think about what they have been saying in recent weeks and months about the so-called “war on women” or supporters of Chick-fil-A. If they thought violent rhetoric emanating from the right was a problem that could be linked to violence, then they must understand that incitement against conservatives is just as noxious. That is all the more true because almost all of the accusations of right-wing involvement in violence have been proven false while the Washington gunman’s statements make it clear that he was motivated by left-wing politics.Word.
One of the most troubling aspects of contemporary public life is the frequency with which violent episodes take on a political coloration....I've followed the homosexual left on almost a day-by-day basis since Proposition 8 passed on November 5th. 2008. It's been almost four years of non-stop intimidation, thuggery, crime, and violence. Today's attempted massacre was only the logical outcome of the left's long campaign of hatred. I think Moonbattery nailed it here, "Armed Moonbat Attacks Family Research Council":
A wrong turn was taken in the Jared Loughner case. Loughner was a lunatic, so deranged that it remained doubtful for a long time whether he would even be competent to stand trial. There is no reason to think that his killing spree was politically motivated, and to the extent that he had a (crazy) political outlook, it was leftist; he listed The Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books.
No matter. The Democratic Party and the media tried, incredibly, in retrospect, to blame Loughner’s shootings on Sarah Palin....
Then we had the absurdity of the Aurora, Colorado Batman shooter being identified breathlessly as a possible Tea Partier by ABC’s Brian Ross. No such luck. Another nut.
Today a public school teacher named Floyd Corkins II walked into the Washington, D.C. office of the Family Research Council, armed with a recently-purchased 9 mm pistol. He was stopped by the guard; news reports don’t clearly explain why. Perhaps he had already drawn his gun, or perhaps he just looked suspicious. Some reports say he was carrying a Chick-Fil-A bag. He shot the guard, who wrestled him to the ground. Along the way, Corkins made observations about the political positions of the FRC, and, when the guard pointed a gun at him–it is not clear, to me anyway, whether the guard was armed or he took Corkins’s gun away from him–Corkins begged him not to shoot, saying something to the effect that it was nothing personal, he just had a problem with the FRC’s politics....
...denouncing proponents of traditional marriage as “haters” isn’t the only instance of over-the-top liberal rhetoric; on the contrary, hysteria is their stock in trade. Thus, we see Barack Obama claiming that Mitt Romney causes cancer, and Joe Biden asserting bizarrely that Republicans want to put someone–African-Americans, I guess, by a process of elimination–”back in chains.” Liberals should take a deep breath and re-think how they talk about public policy issues. If they are looking for haters, it would seem that the mirror is a good place to start.
Imagine if it turns out that Obama’s disgraceful election was the high water mark of moonbattery, and that faith, family, and freedom are the future. Libs aren’t going to get any less angry.No, they're not. And that reminds my of some thoughts I wrote in 2008, "Shattering Myths on Domestic Radicals: 'The Baader Meinhof Complex'." There will indeed come a day in America when the radical left, the homosexual extremists, the Occupy Wall Street criminals, and the assorted enablers in the fever swamps of the Democrat (Socialist) Party finally get fed up with mainstream politics and take to the banner of revolutionary murder and violence.
Tell the radical Left it is time to stop spreading hateful rhetoric attacking individuals and organizations merely for expressing ideas with which they disagree. Our debates can and must remain civil -- but they must never be suppressed through personal assaults that aim only to malign an opponent's character.Yeah, personal gun assault. No doubt the progressive "tolerance" brigades missed the memo.
Looks like Vice President Joe Biden has been taking extracurricular Democratic jive-talking lessons. The results of condescending liberals’ cynical racial pandering attempts are, as always, seismically cringe-inducing.Continue reading.
At a campaign event in Danville, Va., the gaffetastic veep dropped his g’s and picked up a bizarre twang in front of an audience of black voters. Middle-Class Joe swapped his Home Depot apron for an A.M.E. preacher’s robe and sermonized about the big, bad GOP.
Romney’s “gonna let the big banks once again write their own rules,” Biden shouted. “Unnnn-chain Wall Street,” he exclaimed with pulpit bravado. “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains,” the pasty Delaware wheeler-dealer faux-drawled. Extra-emphasis on the “y’all.”
Yes, Biden is rattling chains like an extra in “Roots.” This is the same politician of pallor who cracked jokes about Indians who work in 7-Elevens and who referred to his now-boss as “clean” and “articulate.” Yet, Biden’s demagoguery was met with approving hoots and hollers. Or rather, hollas.
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” RT@jaketapper i'm told the WH will have a statement on the FRC shooting...
— Jon G. (@ExJon) August 15, 2012
Took me all day to decide if I liked this photo or not. Decided that I like it a lot. BuzzFeed billed it as The Wizard. I think I would have called it The Visionary. Either way it's a brilliant catch by the photograher. Confirmed to be authentic, as in not photoshopped.Oh brother. "The Visionary."
For the record, assuming it's true, I think it's just horrible that whoever was behind this latest disaster used Down's women to perpetrate the bombings but I don't see it as a sign of desperation. I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that.Right.
Mitt Romney used a tough new campaign speech to personally blast the Obama campaign on Tuesday, saying comments earlier in the day from Vice President Biden are "what an angry and desperate Presidency looks like."The New York Times is also calling it a tough speech, "Romney Delivers a Harsh Rebuke of Obama at Final Stop on Bus Tour":
"Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago," Romney said while campaigning in Ohio.
Romney was responding to Biden's suggestion that the GOP ticket's economic policies would “put y’all back in chains."
The vice president made the remark while campaigning in Virginia, during a discussion of Wall Street regulation.
"They’ve said it. Every Republican’s voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they’re proposing. Romney wants to let the — he said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules — unchain Wall Street," Biden said. "They’re going to put y’all back in chains. He’s said he’s going to do nothing about stopping the practice of outsourcing."
Romney repeatedly and harshly criticized Team Obama for the remarks.
CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — Hours after the vice president said that the Republican presidential ticket wanted to put Americans “back in chains,” Mitt Romney concluded a four-day bus tour with his harshest rebuke of the Obama administration to date, saying that its negative campaign tactics have “disgraced the presidency.”Continue reading.
In a speech that was striking in its stinging sweep, which aides said was animated by personal frustration with the recent tone of the race, Mr. Romney lashed out at attacks that he called “wild and reckless.”
“His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then cobble together 51 percent of the pieces,” Mr. Romney said. “If an American president wins that way, we all lose.”
The latest offense, Mr. Romney said, came on Tuesday, when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delivered a speech in Iowa. Mr. Biden mocked Mr. Romney for seeking to undo regulations on big banks. “Unchain Wall Street,” the vice president said. “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.” Later, an Obama aide said the White House stood by those provocative words.
REYNOLDSBURG, Ohio — Folks, Mitt Romney’s event tonight in Chillicothe was the best I’ve seen of this campaign. The crowd was huge — estimated between 5,000 and 6,000 — and the setting was awesome: In front of the beautiful courthouse downtown, with the sun just setting behind the courthouse and the sky glowing golden.Read the full speech at the link.
The speech itself was awesome. I’d already heard Mitt speak twice earlier today — first at a coal mine in Beallsville and then in downtown Zanesville — and parts of the speech were already familiar. But I noticed Mitt was reading from a teleprompter at the Chillicothe event, so this particular speech was prepared in advance. But given the content, including references to the “wild and reckless accusations . . . a few hours ago in Virginia,” it was obvious that it had been updated quite recently.
At several points, Mitt was interrupted by cheers and applause, and at times the crowd broke into chants of “Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!” or “USA! USA! USA!” The candidate was fired up and the crowd was fired up, and it was very exciting to be there with my 13-year-old son Jefferson. Afterwards, as we left, I talked briefly to a National Correspondent Whose Name You Would Recognize and said, “Great speech, huh?” The correspondent replied: “He wrote it himself, you know.” My reaction was skeptical. Does any big-time politician write his own speeches anymore? I said, “Really? He wrote it himself?”
The correspondent said, “Swear to God. He wrote it himself” — and then did a cross-my-heart motion.
How would the correspondent know Mitt wrote the speech himself? I don’t know, but his confidence was such — and the speech was so genuinely awesome — that I called my source at Romney campaign HQ in Boston and asked him if he he had a text of the speech he could send me. It just arrived by e-mail and so here, ladies and gentlmen, is what I call The Chillicothe Address...
"Hello L.A., my beautiful home, my beautiful home!"It's a glowing write-up, by Steve Appleford, and he concludes with hip review of Off!'s performance:
The words were heartfelt and unsurprising from Flea (nee Michael Balzary), spoken Sunday with intense passion by the acclaimed bassist at the second of two sold-out nights at Staples Center with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It is all part of the band's life mission, which was never just musical, but also remains an endless celebration of the city and punk-rock scene that birthed them in the early 1980s.
The Chili Peppers catalog includes many lyrics and song titles about "Hollywood," "L.A." and "California," and the same message was there onstage, down to the Lakers banner draped across Flea's amplifiers and their opening act, Off! — homegrown punks chosen specially for the two Staples shows.
Off! is a band at all times stripped down to the punk-rock essentials, each of them dressed in T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, raging on guitar, bass and drums. The foursome — also including guitarist Dimitri Coats, bassist Steven McDonald and drummer Mario Rubalcaba — erupted immediately with "Panic Attack," as band members raged and hopped and banged their heads.Sounds awesome. RTWT at the link.
Bearded in ripped jeans and with long dreadlocks down his back, Morris barked with rage, humor and charisma, slapping his forehead or leering at the crowd. Songs were barely a minute in length, drawn from the band's two collections, including its album "Off!"
There were no covers from their former bands. No Circle Jerks or Black Flag favorites, just new tunes to set the stage on fire.
Syria's embattled regime laid plans to use Russian banks as part of an emergency effort to sidestep American and European sanctions on oil and financial transactions, according to Syrian government documents and correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.The Syria crisis reminds me of Cold War international politics, which I've written about previously. See: "U.S. to Focus on Forcibly Toppling Syrian Government."
The documents offer an inside look at how a shrinking group of regime loyalists is working to prop up Bashar al-Assad's government. Over the past several weeks, senior Syrian officials have held a series of meetings to discuss how to conduct business after being cut off from most Western banking institutions and trade, the documents indicate.
The documents, which span a period from March until early July, also underscore the difficulties facing Western governments in sustaining comprehensive sanctions against Syria, as long as Damascus keeps its strong diplomatic alliance with Moscow. Earlier this month, Russia received a delegation of top Syrian economic officials, including its oil and finance ministers, to discuss the possibility of government loans and long-term oil deals, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said in a news conference.
The sanctions, which began last year and were strengthened this spring, are aimed at Syria's oil and financial sectors. The unilateral actions are coordinated by Western and Middle Eastern countries allied against Syria, but aren't legally binding on Russian and other companies that don't have operations in the U.S. or Europe. Russia and China have used their veto power at the United Nations Security Council to block the possibility of international sanctions.
A cache of documents reviewed by the Journal includes what appears to be authentic correspondence between Syrian government officials and certain foreign companies. In interviews with the Journal, some people who were parties to correspondence confirmed details. None of the people reached by the Journal questioned the authenticity of documents referenced in this article, although some denied conducting any business with Syrian entities.
Syria isn't a globally significant oil producer. The 360,000 barrels of crude it pumps daily represent less than 1% of the world's daily oil production. But Syria's oil sales are one of the last sources of foreign currency for President Assad.
The roughly 150,000 barrels per day Syria has available for export, after its domestic needs are met, are worth approximately $380 million per month at current prices. That is a key reason why the U.S. and the European Union targeted Syria's state oil companies, its central bank and financial sector. The sanctions have cut Syria off from its traditional buyers in Europe, including in Italy, Germany and Spain...
It shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point that Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager of the Obama presidential campaign, could be so completely caught in a lie, as she was last week in the cancer ad produced by the Obama-linked Super PAC that was shown to be dishonest on so many levels, with no price to pay. She came back on numerous shows—NBC’s The Today Show, Andrea Mitchell’s show on MSNBC—and wasn’t even asked about that. On Andrea Mitchell’s show today she was asked about Vice President Joe Biden’s comment earlier in the day before an audience in Danville, Virginia that included several hundred black supporters. Biden told them that if elected president, Mitt Romney was “going to put y’all back in chains.” Cutter told Mitchell that President Obama stood behind both the sentiments and the comments themselves.They're abject f-king liars.
Now, I realize that some of you won't like hearing this, but if the election were held today, Romney would probably lose. Two surveys released within hours of each other by CNN and Fox reported Obama up by seven points and nine points respectively.Watch it at the link.
The swing state story is not a good one either. The real Clear Politics average has Obama up seven in Pennsylvania, five in Ohio, and three in Virginia. Obama leads by slim margins in Florida and Colorado.
So with unemployment still above eight percent and two-thirds of the country thinking that we're going in the wrong direction, how on earth is Obama still ahead? Is every poll other than Rasmussen flawed or biased? First reason, negative ads and Romney brand management.
Just about every week this summer, Democrats have launched a new attack against Romney. And by August, they've stereotyped him as a tax dodging, cancer causing, outsourcing, 1950s aristocrat with a car elevator. Romney has spent a lot of time raising money which is important and he's done that well. But he has not launched the type of aggressive messaging and counter offensive that is necessary to beat the campaign of a Saul Alinsky acolyte.
The Obama team throws a knife and Romney's team tosses a pillow. An effective rapid response team would have nailed Obama on the Super PAC cancer ad. I would have said something like this, we're all getting sick, sick of this poisonous style of campaigning and sick of politicians like President Obama who blame others for their broken promises and failed policies. Instead, Romney's spokeswoman responded by lauding universal healthcare in Massachusetts. Terrible...
American voters are increasingly oblivious to the political ads dominating the airwaves during this election campaign, according to a study of media consumption habits.More at the link.
Nearly a third of likely voters had not watched live TV in the past seven days, according to a June poll conducted by Say Media, a digital publishing company, in conjunction with two political advertising consultancies and two pollsters that represent both Democrats and Republicans....
For years, TV has dominated US political ad budgets. About 66.8 per cent of all US political ad dollars – or $6.6bn – is expected to be spent on broadcast and cable television this year, according to the research firm Borrell Associates.
But political campaigners must now doubt whether television ads will still sway voters. Simply dusting off tried and tested strategies for political advertising no longer works. In closely fought elections, campaigns that deploy the savviest digital advertising strategies increasingly claim victory, political consultants say.
In the 2012 Games, the British squad of 541 competitors, known as Team GB, won 65 medals across 14 sports. Only two other countries, the United States and China, won more gold medals, 46 for the United States and 38 for China. While winning only 24 golds, Russia won 82 medals, pushing Britain into fourth place in the overall medal count.Well, Britain's proudest moment of the opening ceremonies was the celebration of the National Health Service, so it's no surprise that their athletes were on the government dole.
By the measure of medals won in proportion to its population of 62 million, Britain — with 5 percent of China’s population, 20 percent of the United States’ and 43 percent of Russia’s — could claim to have outperformed the nations that finished ahead of it in the medals table. It easily outpaced, too, its own medals haul from the 2008 Beijing Games, when it won 19 golds and 47 medals over all.
More compelling than any medal count, though, were the performances turned in by individual athletes. There was Helen Glover, a gold medalist in the women’s coxless pairs, who never sat in a rowing boat until after the Beijing Games, when she answered a newspaper ad posted by Sir Steve Redgrave, a five-time Olympic rowing gold medalist, asking for tall, strong volunteers for elite performance training.
There was Nicola Adams, a 5-foot-4 flyweight from an inner-city community in the northern city of Leeds, who became the first British female boxer to be awarded an Olympic medal, defeating a Chinese world champion to win gold, then delighting her fans with her modesty about her achievements in a sport that was barred in Britain until 1996.
“It gives me goose bumps,” she said, clutching her medal.
There was, too, Mo Farah, son of a Somali immigrant, with a goat-herding family still working the Somali scrublands, who won the 5,000- and 10,000-meter races, then leaned in to the camera to tell millions watching on BBC television that the country to which he owed his success was Britain, and that the formula for winning was simple. “It’s just a matter of hard graft,” he said....
An important factor in the British success, British competitors, coaches and commentators have agreed, has been the home-team advantage that has meant a surge in medals for many of the countries that have hosted the Games, often followed by a steep falloff at subsequent Olympics.
A case in point is Australia, which soared in the medals count with a total of 58 at its home games in Sydney in 2000, then dropped to 49 in Athens in 2004, and 46 in Beijing in 2008, and 35 in the London Games, a performance that has set off a debate among Australians about what went wrong — and anxiety in Britain, which has competed with its former colony for sports bragging rights for more than a century, to ensure that it does not suffer a similar reverse.
One British winner after another has cited the roar of the home crowd and the sea of waving Union Jacks. Exulting in British performances that have served, at least for the moment, to boost national confidence at a time of dismal economic news, the crowds have drowned out the urgings of the athletes’ coaches, and left competitors saying an hour or more afterward that they still have a ringing in their ears.
But along with the home-field factor, British commentators have acknowledged that much of the British success has been owed to what many here have seen as a very un-British decision in recent years to subsidize its Olympic competitors, putting them on the payroll in return for winning medals at the Games.
Through a program run by a government-created agency called UK Sport, more than a billion dollars in officially regulated lottery money and taxpayer subsidies have been poured into selected sports since the mid-1990s, nearly half of it in the four years since the Olympics in Beijing.
The program is similar to others among the 200 nations and territories that competed at the London Games, but notably different from the approach in the United States, where Olympic competitors, with no government financial support available, rely on corporate and other private financing.
"Publicly, Obama aides are defending the Vice President. Privately, they're not so happy," CNN's John King said about Biden's "chain" comment.Also at Weasel Zippers, "Romney Campaign Calls On Obama To Denounce Biden’s “Back In Chains” Remark…" (via Memeorandum).
"Privately, though, I just had an email exchange, Wolf, with a senior Obama campaign adviser who said this is not helpful. The President is here in Iowa today. He wants to talk about energy. He wants to talk about farm programs. He wants to stay on message because he is trying to win this and other key battleground states and they believe that the Vice President has knocked them off track," King said.
Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, told MSNBC that the campaign doesn’t have a problem with Mr. Biden’s comments because he was using them as a metaphor for the consequences of rolling back Wall Street reform.More at The Hill and Memeorandum.
“The bottom line is that we have no problem with those comments,” Ms. Cutter said.
Mr. Biden has a history of statement and gaffes that have made headlines. In fact, in the same speech Tuesday, Mr. Biden told the Virginia voters: “With you — and I mean this — with you, we can win North Carolina again.”
TAMPA, Fla. — With Mitt Romney’s selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan as his running mate, Florida quickly emerged on Monday as a critical test of the nationwide Republican gamble that concerns over the mounting federal debt can blunt potent Democratic attacks on conservative proposals to revamp Medicare.Well, freakin' right, I was beginning to wonder there for a minute.
As Mr. Romney campaigned through Florida on Monday, Democrats greeted him with a barrage of assaults, including a Web advertisement featuring worried elderly voters in this battleground state. The campaign took on a more heated air as President Obama suggested in Iowa that the Republican ticket would “end Medicare as we know it,” a warning echoed in North Carolina by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ...
Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan signaled that they intended to go on the offensive, challenging the assumption that Republicans were better off playing down the issue. They are gambling that anxiety about deficits, the influence of the Tea Party movement and changing demographics will give them a chance to convince voters that the time has come to confront the rapidly mounting costs of sustaining entitlement programs. Mr. Ryan is scheduled to visit Florida this month.
“Every even-numbered year in Florida, seniors are accustomed to Mediscare tactics; that’s what Democrats do,” said Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney. “The fact is, we’re going to go on offense here. Because the president has raided the Medicare trust fund to the tune of $716 billion to pay for a massive expansion of government known as Obamacare.”
“There won’t be a single senior citizen in Florida who won’t know that by November,” he said.
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Just after noon Monday, Brazos County Constable Brian Bachmann embarked on a seemingly routine chore — serving an eviction notice in a pleasant neighborhood a few blocks from Texas A&M University.More at that top link.
But a man at the house on Fidelity Street opened fire, killing Bachmann, 41. That triggered a 30-minute shootout with police that left the gunman and a bystander dead in an outbreak of violence that shocked this serene college town.
Police killed the gunman, but not before he shot and killed a 43-year-old man and wounded a 55-year-old woman. An officer who responded to a 911 call about the constable was wounded in the leg.
So Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt Mohamed Morsy just sacked the leaders of the military junta General Hussein Tantawi and the Egyptian Army's' Chief of Staff General Sami Enan.Continue reading.
Morsy has also cancelled the constitutional protections that the Egyptian military has enjoyed and overturned their edicts circumscribing his control over foreign and military policy.
That is, as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has declared, today Morsy completed the Egyptian revolution. Egypt is now an Islamic state. Its leaders drink from the same well as al Qaida, Hamas and all the rest. Egypt, with its US armed military has reemerged after 30 years as the greatest military threat that Israel has ever faced.
