One of the brilliant aspects of Taylor Swift's rise to pop stardom is the way she's managed to convince millions of fans, the majority of whom are women her age or younger, that she's one of them.More, "Taylor Swift loses mind, smashes, slashes in new 'Blank Space' clip."
It's central to the message of her new album's first single, "Shake It Off." The song's Mark Romanek-directed video paints Swift as out of her element in various clichéd, pop video settings: as a dysfunctional Lady Gaga-esque performance artist; trapped in a Miley Cyrus-like twerk-off; flailing as a ballerina — only to find her mojo working as part of a group of ordinary people — non-professional actors that Swift again helped select through social media. The video has racked up almost 200 million views in the matter of a few weeks.
"Shake It Off" echoes previous hits including "You Belong With Me" and "Mean": At heart Swift identifies as a nerd — and a proud one at that — a stance that works in her favor as she strives to give voice in many of her songs to the unhip and socially awkward.
Never mind that Swift is a multimillion-selling recording artist who writes, performs and often produces monstrously successful hit singles and albums. She's also one of the few pop culture figures who can score the cover of Elle, People and Rolling Stone magazines while presiding over a multimillion-dollar music empire.
"Taylor's got many, many good things going for her," said Tony Pace, chief marketing officer for Subway restaurants, one of several major corporate alliances Swift is exploiting to promote the new album. "She's astute about social media and she's a very serious and committed artist."
To be sure, Swift has no shortage of haters. Her relatively thin voice is technically no match for powerhouses like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, and anonymous Internet commenters toss out barbs for the perceived trail of A-list broken hearts she's left behind (and perhaps tapped for songwriting inspiration), including musician John Mayer, actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Lautner, and One Direction heartthrob Harry Styles.
One of the new album's sassiest tracks, "Blank Space," was sparked by what was being written about her in the tabloids.
In the song, she brags that "I've got a long list of ex-lovers / They'll all tell you I'm insane / Looking at that face / You look like my next mistake."
"I pride myself on being self-aware," she told her living-room audience. "But I've also noticed there's this drastic fictionalization of my personal life in the press.
"They'll write that I'm needy, that I push people away then pull them back," she said. "I found all this fascinating. So I thought, 'What if I were this girl — this damaged starlet thing? I'm going to write a song as if I were her.'
"I started writing [it] as a joke," she said, "but it ended up being everyone's favorite."
Shinzo Abe and Xi Jinping’s painfully awkward meeting and handshake in Beijing. http://t.co/BHPUdX4vPZ pic.twitter.com/8UPOHnTXCv
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) November 10, 2014
Obama dons purple silk shirt for APEC family photo http://t.co/qDtfisaQeP pic.twitter.com/wI0tfUmNKX
— The Hill (@thehill) November 10, 2014Wearing black and purple silk robes, Presidents Xi and Obama take seats for fireworks display for APEC leaders. pic.twitter.com/hVAOgWMsYh
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) November 10, 2014@AmPowerBlog @BigFurHat @Blazingcatfur @kshaidle No, you mean his Mao-Commie roots.
— Bill Quick (@DailyPundit) November 10, 2014Whether it's an Indo-Muslim silk robe, or a Communist Mao Jacket, it's for certain that hate-troll Walter James Casper's fully down with it!
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 10, 2014Um, no. They want to see the end of your insanity.Lolz.
Zogby Report Card: Obama needs to learn how to lose graciously http://t.co/fivGmwfnpM pic.twitter.com/MzpAD1DFDV
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 10, 2014WASHINGTON — For all the finger-pointing among Democrats over Tuesday’s election calamity, the White House, Congress and party establishment all share responsibility for weaknesses that the defeats laid bare, critics say, and should confront them as the 2016 contest takes shape.Yeah, well, I guess all that emerging Democrat majority palaver was just a bunch of crap all along. Brain-dead leftists have been marinating in the hope-and-change myths for so long now that the reality is coming as really quite a shock. Whites are still 75 percent of the midterm voting population. It's going to be quite a few more election cycles until all the so-called "old, racist white people" die off. Meanwhile, the Democrat-uterus losers can't even hold onto their numbers among Latinos, women, and Millennials.
The problems are fundamental, involving questions of where Democrats focus their party-building efforts, what voters they talk to, and most crucial, what they say to those voters. Missing this year, many Democrats say, was a broad economic message to enthuse supporters and convert some independents.
While the Democrats’ loss of their Senate majority owed much to the fact that they were defending so many seats in the Republican-friendly South and West, that dynamic only underscored the lost promise of Barack Obama’s famed 2004 declaration that there is no red and blue America, only a United States of America — a belief he reiterated, “for all the cynics who say otherwise,” on Wednesday.
However naïve his pronouncement — both then and now — as a candidate in 2008 Mr. Obama built up organizations and hopes among Democrats even in conservative places like Alaska, North Dakota and Idaho. In February 2008, more than 14,000 people jammed a Boise State University hall to hear him speak. “They told me there weren’t any Democrats in Idaho,” Mr. Obama exclaimed. “But I didn’t believe them.”
Yet during his presidency, the national party has set aside that build-it-and-they-will-come approach and allowed the 50-state strategy that Howard Dean, the former chairman, oversaw to wane, focusing instead on Democratic strongholds and battlegrounds. And rarely has Mr. Obama visited states that are not Democratic blue or swing-vote purple.
“We’ve suffered from the neglect of the campaign committees out here,” said Larry LaRocco, a former Idaho congressman. He and other state Democrats had sought help from the national party for local Democrats, given hopes kindled by Idaho Republicans’ infighting and flawed candidates. Despite Tuesday’s Republican wave, Idaho Democrats did gain a state legislative seat and came close in other contests. “With some resources in here we could have a field day,” Mr. LaRocco insisted.
But even he does not argue that conservative Idaho should be a party priority, only that to forfeit states and regions ensures Democrats cannot compete.
More broadly, Democrats across the country are increasingly debating how or even whether they should be doing more to win voters largely lost since the 1960s civil rights era — men, and especially working-class white men.
Some Democrats are resigned, if not content, to all but give up since white men are a shrinking share of the electorate, while the expanding ranks of single women and Latino, African-American and young voters strongly favor Democrats.
But while that gives Democrats the edge in picking presidents, it hurts them in midterm elections because so many of their supporters skip voting in nonpresidential years, leaving a whiter, older and less female electorate that favors Republicans.
The midterm drop-off of Democrats’ core supporters “has reached historic levels,” Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, analysts at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, wrote after the election.
When combined with white men’s overwhelming support for Republicans, the outcome, as on Tuesday, is Democrats’ defeat. In North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa — states where Democrats lost Senate seats after campaigns that emphasized abortion rights, birth control coverage and pay equity for women — support from female voters was disappointing, and swamped by men’s margins for the Republicans.
In North Carolina, where more than a third of voters were white men, Senator Kay Hagan lost their votes by 42 points, 27 percent to 69 percent, exit polls showed. Senator Mary L. Landrieu got support from just 15 percent of white men who voted in Louisiana’s multicandidate contest, a result that helps explain why she is considered likely to lose a Dec. 6 runoff election against the Republican Bill Cassidy.
It's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom. Forced troop worship and compulsory patriotism must end.The response, and not just among conservatives, has been furious.
David Masciotra, you know, one of those stank-ass hipster doofuses who thinks he has something worthwhile to say about veterans and actively serving troops, vomits on to the pages of Salon to lecture the American people on how much he is ungrateful that American troops are responsible for the environment in which he lives, you know, an environment that allows him to criticize those defenders of his freedoms – not just troops, but he’s not grateful for the cops, either...Read more here.
Unbelievable. This is the moment when Salon is done. Done. MT @Salon: Stop worshiping men in uniform
— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) November 9, 2014How disgusting is Salon? THIS disgusting (Spoiler: Now with more military hate) [photos] http://t.co/V1vDpe59F4
— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) November 9, 2014Salon sneers in disdain at veterans, but look who it called a hero http://t.co/yMEUDNHkAM
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) November 9, 2014Don't look now vets-sneering Salon, but you are being schooled by Montel Williams (and it's awesome) http://t.co/JimmHgarri
— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) November 9, 2014Never forget "@Salon: Stop worshiping men in uniform: "It's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom." pic.twitter.com/NGNKYMH2yc
— schlute, M.D. (@coolhandschlute) November 9, 2014Never forget. Salon's views on military are shared by Democrat loco district voters.
— Brad Cundiff (@bradcundiff) November 9, 2014Walter James Casper is virtually ideologically identical to Salon's David Masciotra. He should also be shunned forever.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 9, 2014David Masciotra is basically a spokesperson for the mainstream Democrat Party left. Shun these America-hating reprobates.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 9, 2014
RT @_FreeMarketeer: Lol. RT @Kerryepp: Another map.. This one shows the Democrat Party's America.
#tcot pic.twitter.com/PqODDUFe9B
— Melissa Clouthier (@MelissaTweets) November 8, 2014
PICTURES: On 10th anniversary of #Fallujah, @USMC #veterans remember: http://t.co/UQAcZap0Xp #Iraq via @jhlad pic.twitter.com/SC9VvKMk9e
— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) November 8, 2014Jim Simpson's son, Marine Lance Cpl. Abraham Simpson, was killed on the third day of the 46-day fight for control of Fallouja, Iraq, in 2004.
"My son was a devout Christian," Simpson said after an emotional ceremony Friday attended by hundreds of Marines, former Marines and family members on the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the second battle of Fallouja.
"He believed God would take care of him and if he died he would be going to a better place," Simpson said. "We know he's in that better place now."
Simpson's wife, Maria, said she is untroubled by the fact that Fallouja is now controlled by Islamic State militants.
The Iraqi army has been unable to hold Fallouja and other areas of Anbar province since the U.S. left in 2011. The U.S. is rushing military trainers to Iraq in hopes of improving the Iraqi security forces.
"Our son wasn't doing this for politics," Maria Simpson said. "We know he was doing the right thing at the right place at the right time."
By late December 2004, when the battle was over, 82 Marines and U.S. soldiers had been killed and more than 560 wounded. Eight Marines were awarded the Navy Cross for bravery, second only to the Medal of Honor.
A heavily armed insurgent force in Fallouja had been routed and the path cleared for an election in January, the first since Saddam Hussein had been toppled.
When recruits arrive for boot camp in San Diego or Parris Island, S.C., they are quickly tutored on Marine battles of the past: Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh, and, now, Fallouja.
For Marines, Fallouja was the bloodiest, most prolonged fight since Hue City in Vietnam. Marines fought street to street, attacking buildings where heavily armed insurgents were barricaded.
Although historians will have the final say, odds are strong that, of all the battles fought by Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fight in Fallouja will be the most remembered.
About 6,500 Marines and 1,500 soldiers fought in Fallouja, backed by British and Iraqi forces and 2,500 U.S. sailors in support roles. Insurgent casualties are estimated at 1,200 to 1,500, with an additional 1,500 taken prisoner.
"We did our job and we did it damn well," said Maj. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson, commander of the 1st Marine Division. "We took that city away from the enemy."
When President Obama was elected in 2008, his victory signaled a generational change and the prospect of renewal for the Democratic Party. Instead, the opposite has occurred. Over the past six years, the party has been hollowed out.Ah, yes.
The past two midterm elections have been cruel to Democrats, costing them control of the House and now the Senate, and producing a cumulative wipeout in the states. The 2010 and 2014 elections saw the defeat of younger politicians — some in office, others seeking it — who might have become national leaders.
As the post-Obama era nears, the Democrats’ best-known leaders in Washington are almost entirely from an older generation, from the vice presidency to most of the major leadership offices in the House and Senate. The generation-in-waiting will have to wait longer.
Presidential campaigns and open nomination contests help bring new leaders to national prominence. That appears unlikely in 2016. For all her positive attributes, former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton is a suffocating presence when it comes to intraparty presidential competition. Her command of the Democratic machinery, from fundraising to grass-roots organizing, is so extensive that almost everyone else is understandably intimidated about even testing their talents against her.
Think of it this way: If Clinton were to win the presidency and serve two terms, the next opportunity for a new generation of Democrats to compete nationally would not come until 2024. The Democrats could go 16 years between competitive presidential nomination contests, wiping out opportunities for today’s younger generation to define or redefine the party apart from either the Obama or Clinton eras.
But don’t blame Clinton for these problems. The party’s national bench is so thin that Democrats count themselves lucky to have her available in 2016. If she were to decide not to run, the Democrats would have trouble identifying a field of candidates as extensive as Republicans are likely to put up in the coming presidential race.
The last competitive nomination campaign, in 2008, included — in addition to Obama and Clinton — an experienced field: then-senators Joe Biden, Christopher Dodd and John Edwards, and then-governor Bill Richardson. Clinton has been on the national stage for two decades. Biden, who might run if Clinton does not, was elected to the Senate four decades ago. Dodd and Richardson are out of office. Edwards is in disgrace. With the obvious exceptions, that field has disappeared.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has been moving toward a presidential candidacy. But he suffered a significant setback in Tuesday’s midterms when his state turned to Republican Larry Hogan to replace him. Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) has a populist message for Democrats, but he is not going to be the party’s future. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is a favorite of progressives and capable of stirring passions, but she shows no serious signs of running as long as Clinton is in the race, and perhaps even if Clinton isn’t.
The more serious problem for Democrats is the drubbing they’ve taken in the states, the breeding ground for future national talent and for policy experimentation. Republicans have unified control — the governorship and the legislature — in 23 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Democrats control just seven. Democrats hold 18 governorships, but only a handful are in the most populous states.
In California, Gov. Jerry Brown won again at age 76, his fourth, non-consecutive term in the governor’s office. His victory means that younger Democrats will have to wait until 2018 to compete for one of the nation’s most high-profile political jobs. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo won a second term, but can’t get out of Clinton’s shadow. The only other state among the top 10 in population held by the Democrats is Pennsylvania, newly won by Tom Wolf.
Meanwhile, Republicans control governorships in Florida, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia and Massachusetts. Democrats were hoping to knock off Republicans Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Rick Scott in Florida and Rick Snyder in Michigan. All survived. In Ohio, John Kasich won by the second-largest margin in state history, thanks in part to the implosion of his Democratic opponent.
Ohio is an interesting case study of the fortunes of the two parties. It has been ground zero in presidential campaigns for years. Obama won it twice — but at the state level, Republicans are firmly in control. GOP candidates have won all the statewide elected offices there in five of the past six elections.
Without prominent statewide elected leaders, Democrats are in danger of seeing their state party structures atrophy. This has happened in Texas over the past two decades, ever since Republicans seized control of the politics of the state...
The origins of our inner ear lie hundreds of millions of years back in evolution, when primitive fish began to develop hollows in the skin that were sensitive to waves of pressure from water around them, as well as to water’s movement as they pitched and rolled. With time the nerves became more refined, the hollows became tubes of seawater, and those tubes eventually closed off and buried themselves in the head. Further on in evolution, bones that were originally related to the jaw migrated and miniaturized, becoming the amplifying bones of the ear. The tubes dedicated to sensing rotational movement became our semicircular canals (balance), and it’s theorized that parts involved in sensing the pressure waves became our cochleas (hearing). In the composition of their salts, the fluids of our inner ear still carry the memory of that primordial ocean.A wonderful essay.
Within the human cochlea is a thin sensitive membrane, around thirty to thirty-five millimeters long, wound into a spiral and bathed in this salty fluid. This membrane resonates with sound, sensing from high to low frequency along its length, while associated nerve cells convey that resonance to the brain. To describe it simplistically, a cochlear implant is a series of very fine electrodes that lie along the length of the membrane. Sound is coded in a receiver behind the ear (often held on by magnets) and transmitted to electrodes, which then stimulate the nerve cells along the membrane in a way broadly analogous to sound. After William House’s first device in the early 1960s, during the next three decades groups in California, Melbourne, Vienna, and Utah worked almost independently on the research problem of how to optimize this ostensibly simple, but devilishly complicated, idea.
Enough is enough. An important bloc of voters made their voices heard on Tuesday. Their message: Quit rewarding people who violate our immigration laws. They chose a sovereign nation over an illegal alien sanctuary nation, and they told politicians in both parties loud and clear:Keep reading.
Put Americans first.
Will D.C. listen?
These voters are tired of politicians creating magnets for illegal immigrants. They’re tired of preferential treatment for defiant border-crossers, visa overstayers and deportation fugitives. They’re tired of the heavy costs and consequences of the government’s systemic refusal to protect its borders and fully implement interior enforcement.
Pay attention, both parties in the Beltway: These aren’t voters in a red-state bastion. They’re fed-up voters in bright blue Oregon — a whopping 941,042 of them, to be exact — who overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure to provide special driver’s licenses “without requiring proof of legal presence in the United States.”
When Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber and radicals in the state legislature tried to push through illegal alien driver’s cards against the will of the people, the people struck back and forced a full public vote and electoral accountability.
“Citizens expect our lawmakers to uphold our laws, not work at finding ways to circumvent them,” said the group Protect Oregon Driver Licenses. “Oregon is the only state in the country that (gave citizens the) opportunity to vote on giving driver cards to those who cannot prove legal presence in the United States.” If only every state had the power of initiative and referendum. Ten states, including California, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont and Washington, plus the District of Columbia, “have had the law forced upon them with little or no recourse available to them.”
Listen up, D.C.: The Oregon proposal went down in flames by more than a 2-to-1 margin. More voters weighed in on Measure 88 than any other single candidate or question on the ballot, including the campaigns for governor, U.S. senator and marijuana legalization.
Who supported Measure 88? Entitled ethnic lobbyists, immigration lawyers, American worker-betraying labor unions like the SEIU and UFCW, the ACLU, the militant Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, agricultural interests, NARAL, far-left church leaders, soft-on-illegal-immigration newspaper editorial boards, and some business-pandering Republicans.
Pro-amnesty actress and Barack Obama campaign finance bundler Eva Longoria’s “Latino Victory Project” forked over $50,000 to the pro-Measure 88 PAC. The open-borders campaign raised a whopping $500,000-plus from its deep-pocketed Big Government/Big Business/Hollywood patrons.
Who opposed the referendum? Grassroots citizens and a majority of common-sense sheriffs in Oregon who were outspent 10-to-1.
The police, sheriffs and border patrol agents who opposed Measure 88 forcefully connected the dots between immigration enforcement and homeland security. As I’ve reported repeatedly over the years, driver’s licenses are tickets into the American mainstream. They allow residents to establish an identity and foothold into their communities. They help you open bank accounts, enter secure facilities and, yes, board planes...
Some observations on the election:
1) This was a wave, folks. It will be a benchmark for judging waves, for either party, for years.
2) In seriously contested races, Republican candidates were generally younger, more vigorous, more sunny and optimistic than Democrats. The contrast was sharpest in Colorado and Iowa, which voted twice for President Obama. Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst seemed to be looking forward to the future. Their opponents grimly championed the stale causes of feminists and trial lawyers of the past.
Democrats see themselves as the party of the future. But their policies are antique. The federal minimum wage dates to 1938, equal pay for women to 1963, access to contraceptives to 1965. Raising these issues now is campaign gimmickry, not serious policymaking.
Democratic leading lights have been around a long time. The party’s two congressional leaders are in their 70s. The governors of the two largest Democratic states are sons of former governors who won their first statewide elections in 1950 and 1978.
This has implications for 2016. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, worked in her first campaign in 1970. She has been a national figure since 1991. The Clintons’ theme song, “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,” was released in 1977. That will be 39 years ago in 2016.
3) The combination of Obama’s low job approval and Harry Reid’s virtual shutdown of the Senate ensured a Republican Senate majority. Reid prevented amendments — Mark Begich of Alaska never got to introduce one — that could have helped them in campaigns.
Votes were blocked on issues with clear Senate majorities — such as the Keystone XL pipeline, medical-device tax repeal, and the bipartisan patent-reform bill backed by Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.0.
That left Democrats running for reelection stuck with 95-plus percent Obama voting records. It left them with no independent votes or initiatives to point to. Reid kept Democratic candidates well stocked with money. But not with winning issues.
4) Democratic territory has been reduced to the bastions of two core groups — black voters and gentry liberals. Democrats win New York City and the San Francisco Bay area by overwhelming margins but are outvoted in almost all the territory in between — including, this year, Obama’s Illinois. Governor Jerry Brown ran well behind in California’s Central Valley, and Governor Andrew Cuomo lost most of upstate New York.
Democratic margins have shrunk among Hispanics and, almost to the vanishing point, among young voters. Liberal Democrats raised money to “turn Texas blue.” But it voted Republican by wider-than-usual margins this year.
Under Obama, the Democratic base has shrunk numerically and demographically. With superior organization, he was able to stitch together a 51 percent majority in 2012. But like other Democratic majority coalitions — Woodrow Wilson’s, Lyndon Johnson’s, even Franklin Roosevelt’s — it has proved to be fragile and subject to fragmentation.
5) In many states — including many carried twice by Obama — Republicans have been governing successfully, at least in the estimation of their voters. Governor Scott Walker has won his third victory in four years in Wisconsin against the frantic efforts of public-employee unions.
Governor John Kasich won a landslide victory against a flawed opponent in Ohio, and Governor Rick Snyder won solidly in Michigan after signing a right-to-work law hated by private-sector unions. In Florida, Governor Rick Scott’s second consecutive one-point victory means that Republicans will be in control for 20 years in what is now the nation’s third-largest state.
Democratic governance, in contrast, was rebuked by the voters in Massachusetts, in Maryland (with the nation’s fourth-highest black population in percentage terms), and in Obama’s home state of Illinois.
(6) The Obama Democrats labor under the illusion that a beleaguered people hunger for an ever-bigger government. The polls and the election results suggest, not so gently, otherwise.
The fiasco of HealthCare.gov, the misdeeds of the IRS, the improvisatory warnings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — all undermine confidence in the capacity of big government. Looking back over the last half-century, we can see that the highest levels of trust in government came, interestingly, during the administration of Ronald Reagan.
7) This election was a repudiation of the big-government policies of the Obama Democrats. It was not so much an endorsement of Republicans as it was an invitation to them to come up with better alternative policies...
The Clintons aren’t gods. They are human beings—extremely, terribly, irredeemably flawed human beings.That's a brutal, and extremely perceptive analysis. More at the link.
Their specialty: Mitigating Democratic losses among whites without college degrees. In 2014, the Clintons couldn’t stop the bleeding. Republicans won the white working class by 30 points. And it will be difficult for Hillary Clinton to reduce this deficit over the next two years.
That is because of her problematic position as heir apparent to an unpopular incumbent. Her recent talk of businesses and corporations not creating jobs illustrates the dilemma: She has to identify herself with her husband’s legacy in Elizabeth Warren’s left-wing Democratic Party, while dissociating herself with the repudiated policies of the president she served as secretary of State. Has Clinton ever demonstrated the political skill necessary to pull off such a trick?
A failed president weighs heavily on his party. He not only drags it down in midterm elections such as 2006, 2010, and 2014. He kills its chances in presidential years. Think Hubert Humphrey. Think John McCain.
The McCain-Clinton comparison is worth considering. Both would be among the oldest presidents in American history. Both are slightly at odds with their party: McCain on campaign finance and immigration, Clinton on corporatism and foreign policy. Both lost the nomination to the presidents they sought to replace. Both campaigned for rare third consecutive presidential terms for their parties in the cycle after those parties lost Congress.
The environment was so hostile to Republicans by the time Election Day 2008 arrived, and the Democrats had so successfully defined themselves in complete opposition to the incumbent, that McCain didn’t have a chance. But who in 2006 had predicted that a financial crisis would be the most important issue of 2008? Who in 2012 had the slightest idea that the Islamic State and Ebola and illegal migration would be factors in 2014? Who in 2014 knows with even the faintest degree of certainty what will loom over the electorate on Election Day 2016?
Two days after his party’s midterm romp, House Speaker John Boehner became the second leading Republican to warn that unilateral action by President Barack Obama on immigration would “poison the well” for any cooperation with the new GOP Congress.More.
Among the causes of the standoff: a year of previously unreported talks between Messrs. Boehner and Obama over a legislative compromise to fix the balky immigration system.
The two men started talking after the 2012 election, according to detailed accounts provided by several aides on both sides. The discussions ended this summer with the two sitting stony-faced around a white wrought-iron table outside the Oval Office.
“When you play with matches, you take the risk of burning yourself,” Mr. Boehner said Thursday of possible unilateral immigration action by the president. “And he’s going to burn himself if he continues to go down this path.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell , the Kentucky Republican who is expected to lead the GOP’s new Senate majority, made similar admonitions a day earlier, setting the Republican legislative and Democratic executive agendas on a collision course. The immigration issue stands to imperil what had looked like a rare opportunity offered to find common ground on trade and business taxes, among other matters.
Mr. Obama vowed in his Wednesday postelection news conference to move ahead on immigration by himself, making changes that people close to the process say could give safe harbor to perhaps a few million people in the U.S. illegally.
At the White House, the question isn’t whether Mr. Obama will act but how sweeping his order will be. He is under intense pressure from immigration activists, who worry he will back down because of the election results or to avoid antagonizing the GOP.
The White House isn’t ruling out an immigration deal with Congress before the next president takes office in 2017, and one remains possible. But in the eyes of many of those involved in the talks, the Obama-Boehner discussions were the last, best chance to reach an agreement.
Mr. Obama promised on Wednesday to rescind any executive action if Congress later passes legislation. Few think it is likely to. In outlining their plans for the year, neither Mr. Boehner nor Mr. McConnell put immigration on the agenda. In fact, if Mr. Obama goes through with an executive action, there will likely be a congressional effort to undo it...
U.S. sending up to 1,500 more military advisers to Iraq, bring total to about 2,900. http://t.co/YnClGMhUGg
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) November 7, 2014Here’s the full Pentagon statement on the 1500 more US troops to Iraq. pic.twitter.com/s83CrEhVxZ
— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) November 7, 2014News that COULD wait until after the election: White House: Up to 1,500 more troops headed to Iraq http://t.co/juFge10EqW
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) November 7, 2014The Democrats’ road to a future House majority is steep, because their last redoubts in the Deep South and Appalachia are now gone, and they failed to make inroads in the suburban and exurban seats that are now so crucial to them to build a House majority. Previous Democratic House majorities featured a fair number of seats from conservative districts, but those kinds of Democrats are all but extinct now.Ain't it the truth?
It may take an unpopular GOP president running in a midterm—a 2006-style scenario—for the Democrats to have their next real chance to take the House, although Democrats hope a different presidential candidate (Hillary Clinton?) will improve their chances in Appalachia and the South. Spoiler alert: She probably won’t. Those culturally conservative areas have been trending away from Democrats and seem unlikely to snap back.
The modern left is built around a trio of laudable principles: protecting the environment is good, racism is bad, and so is demonizing a person over his or her sexual preferences. (In the chapter of his book Intellectuals titled “The Flight from Reason,” Paul Johnson wrote that “At the end of the Second World War, there was a significant change in the predominant aim of secular intellectuals, a shift of emphasis from utopianism to hedonism.” ) But just as the Bircher right began to see communists everywhere, the new Bircher left sees racism, sexism, homophobia, and Koch Brothers everywhere.More.
They’re lurking around more corners than Gen. Ripper imagined there were commies lurking inside Burpelson Air Force Base. They’re inside your video games! They own NFL teams! They’ll steal your condoms! Disagree with President Obama? Racist! (That goes for you too, Bill, Hillary, and your Democratic supporters.) Not onboard for gender-neutral bathrooms? Not too thrilled with abortion-obsessed candidates like Wendy Davis and “Mark Uterus”? Sexist! Disagree with using global warming as a cudgel to usher in the brave new world of bankrupt coal companies and $10 a gallon gasoline? Climate denier!
And as with the original Birchers, don’t get ‘em started on fluoride.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama secretly wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, according to people briefed on the correspondence.More at that top link.
The letter appeared aimed both at buttressing the campaign against Islamic State and nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal.
Mr. Obama stressed to Mr. Khamenei that any cooperation on Islamic State was largely contingent on Iran reaching a comprehensive agreement with global powers on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline, the same people say.
The October letter marked at least the fourth time Mr. Obama has written Iran’s most powerful political and religious leader since taking office in 2009 and pledging to engage with Tehran’s Islamist government.
The correspondence underscores that Mr. Obama views Iran as important—whether in a potentially constructive or negative role—to his emerging military and diplomatic campaign to push Islamic State from the territories it has gained over the past six months.
Mr. Obama’s letter also sought to assuage Iran’s concerns about the future of its close ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, according to another person briefed on the letter. It states that the U.S.’s military operations inside Syria aren’t targeted at Mr. Assad or his security forces.
Mr. Obama and senior administration officials in recent days have placed the chances for a deal with Iran at only 50-50. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is set to begin intensive direct negotiations on the nuclear issue with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, on Sunday in the Persian Gulf country of Oman.
“There’s a sizable portion of the political elite that cut their teeth on anti-Americanism,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference on Wednesday about Iran’s leadership, without commenting on his personal overture. “Whether they can manage to say ‘Yes’…is an open question.”
For the first time this week, a senior administration official said negotiations could be extended beyond the Nov. 24 deadline, adding that the White House will know after Mr. Kerry’s trip to Oman whether a deal with Iran is possible by late November.
“We’ll know a lot more after that meeting as to whether or not we have a shot at an agreement by the deadline,” the senior official said. “If there’s an extension, there’re questions like: What are the terms?”
Mr. Obama’s push for a deal faces renewed resistance after Tuesday’s elections gave Republicans control of the Senate and added power to thwart an agreement and to impose new sanctions on Iran. Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) have introduced legislation to intensify sanctions.
“The best way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is to quickly pass the bipartisan Menendez-Kirk legislation—not to give the Iranians more time to build a bomb,” Mr. Kirk said Wednesday.
House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) expressed concern when asked about the letter sent by Mr. Obama.
“I don’t trust the Iranians, I don’t think we need to bring them into this,” Mr. Boehner said. Referring to the continuing nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, Mr. Boehner said he “would hope that the negotiations that are under way are serious negotiations, but I have my doubts.”
1. Paul LePage of MaineWith the exception of Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania and Sean Parnell in Alaska (where they're still counting ballots), the GOP took all the remaining states Booman expected to go to the Dems. And Rick Scott in Florida and Scott Walker in Wisconsin are especially demoralizing wins for the GOP. Indeed, Walker was automatically propelled to the front ranks of the 2016 GOP presidential field. And Florida will remain one of the biggest of battlegrounds heading into the next election, to the epic consternation of the dumbshit Democraps.
2. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania
3. Rick Snyder of Michigan
4. Scott Walker of Wisconsin
5. Sam Brownback of Kansas
6. Rick Scott of Florida.
7. Sean Parnell of Alaska
.@BooMan23 I'm drinking your tears, Martin. You're one of the very bastards I wanted to see crushed. Congratulations.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 5, 2014.@BooMan23 You suck, Martin.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 5, 2014As the dimensions of Tuesday’s political wave emerge, this election wasn’t merely a rebuke to President Obama. It was also a referendum on the blue and red state models of state governance, and the Republican reformers won a resounding vindication.Walker has prevailed to the bitter, bitter consternation of the radical left.
Scott Walker (Wisconsin), Rick Scott (Florida), Rick Snyder (Michigan), Brian Sandoval (Nevada) and others entered office confronting economic decline and a seemingly intractable status quo. Against raucous liberal opposition, they disciplined government; deregulated to boost competitiveness, investment and job creation; and reduced the tax burden—even, in the case of Sam Brownback of Kansas and John Kasich of Ohio, cutting income-tax rates.
They also defied entrenched government union power that is the greatest obstacle to reform. The alliance between Democrats and public workers has increasingly tapped out taxpayers, creating liabilities like union pensions that are too large to afford but too politically privileged to reform. The Republicans tried to break this cycle of decline.
The leading drama was Wisconsin, where unions spent millions in a bid to show that limiting collective bargaining, mandatory dues collection and health and retirement benefits will end a political career. Mr. Obama campaigned for Democrat Mary Burke, and the liberal revanchism included occupying the legislature, multiple recall elections, and an abusive John Doe investigation against Mr. Walker’s allies.
Mr. Walker nonetheless won his third victory in four years by a larger margin than the recall. State unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 2008, even if the 111,000 jobs created in his first term are short of his promise of 250,000. He overhauled the budget to improve the business climate and collapsed tax brackets, while the flexibility for local school districts to renegotiate labor contracts has provided property tax relief and avoided teacher layoffs...
Democratic disaster casts a shadow on Nancy Pelosi: http://t.co/eu9OKnrEtL pic.twitter.com/ysJvVK3wHR
— SFGate (@SFGate) November 5, 2014It was a Beautiful Day... so far it's turning into a spectacular night... #Election2014 small government is winning! pic.twitter.com/30iREmKy5y
— Missy (@SaysMissy) November 5, 2014Harvard now offers a class on anal sex http://t.co/uTbt81G88Q
— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) November 6, 2014Cosmo, Wendy Davis, Sandra Fluke, MSNBC, Lena Dunham all make the list of war on women losers --> http://t.co/lQYCP6wCSu
— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) November 6, 2014$74 million later, the most hostile Congress environmentalists have faced in years. Was it worth it for Tom Steyer? http://t.co/NP6erJi9D6
— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) November 6, 2014
Beautiful RT @BlakeSeitz: Zero to 100, real quick. pic.twitter.com/tgetbB22LR
— Kemberlee Kaye (@KemberleeKaye) November 5, 2014
Voters express a distinctly anti-government mood at the midterm ballot box, repudiate Obama-Democrats! http://t.co/HYaOVfyuB5 @Instapundit
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 5, 201431-year-old man arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run driving in the Halloween collision in Santa Ana that left three girls dead has a years-long criminal history and was driving on a suspended license, court records show.I can hardly breathe as I write this post.
Jaquinn Bell, a resident of Orange, was arrested Sunday outside a Motel 6 in Stanton, Santa Ana police said at a Monday news conference. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.
Court records in Orange County Superior Court show that Bell was convicted of hit-and-run driving and driving under the influence in August.
He was sentenced to 10 days in jail, ordered to serve three years of probation and enroll in both an alcohol abuse and child abuse treatment program, court records show.
In the deadly crash on Halloween night, police said that Bell was driving with his two children, a 17-year-old boy and 14-year-old daughter.
Police said they are attempting to determine whether Bell was driving under the influence at the time of the Friday night incident.
Police said they initially detained Bell's mother and half-sister as well as his two children in connection with the incident but subsequently released everyone but Bell.
Bell’s criminal record dates back until at least 2009 when he pleaded guilty to corporal injury on a spouse or co-habitant and was given probation, which court records show has been revoked seven times since then.
The probation violations included a 2009 case in which he was charged with driving under the influence and driving on a suspended license. He was again given probation after he pleaded guilty the following year, court records show.
In 2010, he pleaded guilty to violating a protective order and was sentenced to 30 days in jail and probation and was ordered to complete a treatment program for batterers, court documents show.
His probation was revoked and then reinstated several additional times in the subsequent years, including for his August arrest for hit-and-run driving and driving under the influence.
His driver’s license was suspended in early October – 17 days before the crashed that killed the three trick-or-treaters in Santa Ana.
Twin sisters Lexia and Lexandra Perez and their friend, Andrea Gonzales, were struck crossing the road at Old Grand Street and Fairhaven Avenue on Friday at about 6:45 p.m. ...
