Theo Spark is On Fire!

Man, Theo's been posting all kinds of lovely ladies over there!

See Tuesday's "Bedtime Totty...", and "Tuesday Totty..."

And, "Bonus Babe..."

PHOTO: Monday's "Bedtime Totty..."

'Off the Grid' Voters and Campaign 2012

Here's a new poll from SAY Media, "Research Abstract: Voters Going Off the Grid: 2012."

And here's the write-up, "Will “Off the Grid” Voters Decide the Next Presidential Election?"

Plus, see Emily Steel at the Financial Times, "Voters turn on but tune out political ads":

American voters are increasingly oblivious to the political ads dominating the airwaves during this election campaign, according to a study of media consumption habits.

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.

More at the link.

Home Field Advantage: British Athletes Subsidized in London Olympics

At the New York Times, "British Athletes Spurred by Home Fields and Subsidies":

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.

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.

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.

At least things worked out for them. U.S. reporter Meredith Viera had a thumb infection, but was advised not to use the public health system, at Twitchy, "Meredith Vieira trashes Britain’s NHS on ‘Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’."

PHOTO CREDIT: Mo Farah, via Wikimedia Commons.

CNN's John King: Obama Campaign Admits 'Privately' That Joe Biden's Racist Comments 'Not Helpful'

CNN's where the action is lately, man. I was watching Wolf Blitzer in The Situation Room earlier, and this is a bombshell segment with John King:

Via RealClearPolitics, "CNN: Senior Obama Official Said Biden's Comment "Not Helpful" And Knocked Campaign Off Message":

"Publicly, Obama aides are defending the Vice President. Privately, they're not so happy," CNN's John King said about Biden's "chain" comment.

"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.

Also at Weasel Zippers, "Romney Campaign Calls On Obama To Denounce Biden’s “Back In Chains” Remark…" (via Memeorandum).

Massive Python Found in Everglades National Park

At the Atlantic, "Scientists Show Off the Largest Python Ever Found in the Everglades."

'Put an Obama Bumper Sticker on Your Head When You Do This...'

Ed Morrissey has it, at Hot Air, "Video: Soledad O’Brien’s membership in Mantra Club confirmed."

PREVIOUSLY: "CNN's Soledad O'Brien Cribs 'Talking Points Memo' in Feeble Attack on Paul Ryan's Medicare Plan."

"CNN's independent analysis" means "Talking Points Memo."

Katy Perry Bikini Bottom Slips While Boogie Boarding at Raging Waters in San Dimas

She's a good sport!

At London's Daily Mail, "Bottoms up! Katy Perry shows off a bit too much as she suffers a major wardrobe mishap going down a water slide."

Man, that's something else.

Barack Obama, Stephanie Cutter Double Down on Joe Biden's Disgusting 'Back in Chains' Slur

Twitchy reports, "Gaffetastic new tone! Biden in Va.: ‘They’re going to put you back in chains,’ ‘We can win NC again’," and "How low can they go? Obama agrees with Biden’s ‘they’re going to put you back in chains’ comment."

And Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter is down with it as well, "Biden’s ‘Back in Chains’ Remark Draws Fire":

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.

“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.”

More at The Hill and Memeorandum.

Democrats Demagogue Paul Ryan's Medicare Plan

From the DNC Chair on down, the Democrats are lying, and spinning, and demonizing Paul Ryan's Medicare proposals.

This CNN report below is pretty fair, and here's the front page report at today's New York Times, "Medicare Rises as Prime Election Issue":

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.

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.

Well, freakin' right, I was beginning to wonder there for a minute.

More at Big Government, "Paul Ryan Didn't Gut Medicare, Barack Obama Did."

CNN's Soledad O'Brien Cribs 'Talking Points Memo' in Feeble Attack on Paul Ryan's Medicare Plan

At Big Journalism, CNN's Soledad O'Brien Quotes Left-Wing Blog to Attack Ryan Plan.

Here's the first part of the Soledad's segment, headlined "scare tactics," just like Democrat talking points. She shuffling the Talking Points Memo piece at 3:23 minutes. It's all leftist talking points!

Later in the segment Barbara Comstock, Virginia Statehouse Delegate and Romney adviser, smacks down O'Brien, who then fidgets through the TPM hit piece to get back on point. NewsBuster has that segment, "Soledad O'Brien Caught Reading Liberal Blog During Heated Debate With Romney Adviser." O'Brien's seen flipping through TPM's crib sheet at 2:41 minutes.

O'Brien's not "keeping them honest." She's shilling for the administration. She's so transparently partisan it's ridiculous. But you gotta love her look of deep consternation as she ruffles through the papers and the camera cuts back to Ms. Comstock. She's getting mad! Mad that someone has key info to smack down the left's lies!

Again, I was starting to get worried. Maybe Team Romney's finally getting with the program.

The Other McCain has more, "Caught! CNN’s Soledad O’Brien Uses Liberal Blog TPM for Show-Prep."

Three Dead in Shooting Near Texas A&M University

At the Los Angeles Times, "Three killed in shootings near Texas A&M University."

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.

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.

More at that top link.

And at Twitchy, "Anti-gun advocates use shooting near Texas A&M to push for gun control."

Egypt Is Now an Islamist State

From Caroline Glick, "The IDF's Egyptian fiasco":

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.

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.

Continue reading.

Vietnamese Airline's In-Flight Bikini Show (VIDEO)

It's VietJetAir, via News.com.au, "Airline fined for inflight bikini dance."

And there's a YouTube clip here.

Talk about flying the friendly skies!

Paul Ryan Surges With Seniors

I guess they're not too worried about Ryan throwing 'em off a cliff.

At Director Blue, "As Seniors Flock to Paul Ryan and Fiscal Sanity, Axelrod Campaign Dials Smear-Ray Setting to '100'."

Mitt Romney Sought 'Pact' With Obama to Take 'Business or Family or Taxes' Off the Table

As I reported earlier, the race is basically tied, and while the it's still too early to tell the size of the Paul Ryan polling bump, the campaign is clearly energized and appears ready to take it to the sleazebag Democrats.

I say "appears ready" because I have lingering doubts that Mitt Romney fully understands the depth of Team Obama's moral abyss (infinitely bottomless) and whether he's ready to fight back twice as hard to destroy the left's morally bankrupt politics of personal destruction. Progressive are animals, they're pigs. The toxic mudslinging this fall's going to make even Sarah Palin blush.

Michelle Malkin expressed a sense of hope the other night on Twitter, when Romney cheered the hearts of activists across the land by picking the conservative chair of the GOP House Budget Committee:

Now, if we never see Andrea Saul stumbling & rambling on TV again, that would really be a relief. michellemalkin.com/2012/08/11/thi…
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) August 11, 2012

In recent interviews Michelle's been exhorting Team Romney to stand up the the lies: "Hey Team Romney, 'Get a Hang of Yourselves!'"

I think we all need to redouble the call, considering the news that Romney sought a "pact" with Team Obama to keep "business or family or taxes" off limits. See the Los Angeles Times, "Obama seizes lead in race to define Romney." The report suggests that Obama's attack ads have been "trashing" Mitt Romney, and the Republican nominee's been slow to respond. But this part is jaw-dropping:

In ads airing heavily in states most likely to decide the election, the president is already weaving those attacks into a larger case against Romney on the economy — and, more important, against the Republican fiscal agenda championed by none other than [Paul] Ryan.

"You work hard, stretch every penny," an announcer says in a new Obama ad about Romney. "But chances are you pay a higher tax rate than him. Mitt Romney made $20 million in 2010, but paid only 14% in taxes — probably less than you." The ad says Romney wants to "give millionaires another tax break and raise taxes on middle-class families," which Romney denies. "He pays less, you pay more," the ad says.

The potency of Obama's attacks is best measured by Romney's response. He recently hired corporate crisis PR specialist Michele Davis to mount an aggressive defense. He told NBC that he wanted a pact with Obama to stop attack ads on such subjects as "business or family or taxes." And Romney told Fox News that his "biggest challenge is making sure that my message is able to break through all the clutter that comes from the Obama team."

Romney's selection of Ryan is by far the candidate's most important move to address that challenge, even if its potential effectiveness is open to debate. Obama's campaign has pounced on Ryan's candidacy to amplify its message that the Republican's proposals favor wealthy taxpayers like Romney over the middle class.

On ABC's"This Week"on Sunday, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod called Ryan a right-wing ideologue who "constructed a budget that, like Romney, would lavish trillions of dollars of tax cuts, most of them on the wealthy."

Strategists in both parties say Romney made a serious error in neglecting to respond quickly to Obama ads trashing his record as the leader of Bain Capital, the Boston investment firm that he founded. The millions of dollars spent by presidential candidates on TV advertising in battleground states can be hugely influential with voters, and Romney gave Obama a three-month head start in defining him.

"In those voters' minds, they're starting to fill in — choosing colors from the palette — who Romney is, and the Romney campaign didn't offer them any colors to choose from," said John Weaver, who was a top advisor to Republican John McCain, the 2008 nominee. "I don't think it's been wise to wait this long to deal with it."

Continue reading.

The piece cites top Democrat strategist Bob Shrum, who worked for (loser) John Kerry in 2004. Shrum suggests the Democrat attacks are hitting home and its getting late in the game to turn things around, as the Times summarizes, "Romney's failure to start telling his life story while Obama's team was assailing his business record would make it harder to accomplish now."

Team Romney must know that the Obama campaign will do anything, f-king anything. They. Simply. Do. Not. Have. Ethics. They don't care. Recall from last week, "Obama campaign: Don't blame us for ad blaming Romney for cancer death." The Democrats are working on lies and deceit, and they know they can get away with it. Over the weekend, CBS News' Nancy Cordes gave Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter a pass on the Joe Soptic scandal, and just yesterday Soledad O'Brien also served as an Obama lapdog, failing to grill Cutter on the Obama campaign's improprieties, "Stephanie Cutter’s free pass from media extends to Anderson Cooper 360."

Despite this, Team Romney has failed to pick up the pace and effectively slam the Obama campaign for its lies. Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom had twelve minutes on Sunday's "Meet the Press" to call out Cutter for the lies, and he never raised the issues directly. I was practically pulling my hair out watching that clip. What is wrong with these people?!! The MSM hacks won't do it for you. Republicans will get lucky when idiots like Debbie What-An-Ass Schultz make gaffes so big you could drive a Mack Truck through them. And Wolf Blitzer corrected the DNC chair in a manner that one would expect from the media across the board. But it won't happen. You'll get a gift here or there, but it's not happening media-wide, across the information battlespace. I've been saying it, and many others, but Romney's running against the Obama campaign and his political enablers in the Democrat-Media-Complex. It's not a fair fight. Republicans can assume nothing resembling even-handedness, so they've got to seize the initiative themselves. The talks shows get a lot of play, not just during the initial airing but in the blogs and campaign spots later. Team Romney can't waste a single opportunity.

Advice to Romney: This is war man! It's time to go of offense and do it now! Game on!

'This election will be a nauseating journey through the most foul corners of the Democrat psyche...'

The Democrats as Jason Voorhees, at Bookworm Room, "The Democrats’ 2012 campaign: A bloody spectacle, almost too horrible to watch."

Yeah, it's definitely shaping up as a horror show. The bloodbath comes on November 6th.

New Zogby Poll: 'The Ryan Effect'

See Newsmax, "John Zogby Poll: Ryan Gives Romney Big Push in Swing States, Independents."

Mitt Romney’s campaign has gotten a decisive bump upwards with the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, a new poll by JZ Analytics reveals.

The poll — the first survey conducted after Romney announced Ryan as his vice presidential choice — shows the Romney/Ryan ticket tied with Obama/Biden at 46 percent.

But a JZ Analytics poll from a few weeks ago had Obama leading Romney by 5 percentage points, and most major polls also had Obama comfortably in the lead before the Ryan selection.

Continue reading.

And see Nice Deb, "The Ryan Bump: New Zogby Poll Shows Huge Boost for Romney in Swing States."

Zogby finds 45.2 percent of independents back #RomneyRyan, compared to 40.1 for Obama/Biden. But the methodology doesn't indicate how swing states were sampled. See: "Methodology, JZ Analytics Poll of Likely Voters in United States, 8/11/12 thru 8/12/12." And the summary is here: "New JZ Analytics Telephone Poll: 'The Ryan Effect'."

I take Zogby's polling with a bigger grain of salt than usual. He's basically a leftist pollster with some credibility problems. The methods look pretty good but I'm not sure if he randomly sampled folks in swing states, and there's no cross-tabs at the links.

That said, here's Rasmussen, "Presidential Tracking Poll":

Monday, August 13, 2012 -- The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Mitt Romney attracting support from 47% of voters nationwide, while President Obama earns the vote from 44%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

Data available to Platinum Members shows that Romney does a bit better when leaners are included....

These results are based upon interviews conducted nightly and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, two-thirds of the interviews conducted for today’s update were completed after it was announced that Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan will be Romney’s vice presidential running mate. The announcement so far has had little impact on the numbers. See tracking history.

And Gallup's presidential election tracking poll shows the campaign tied up at 46 percent through August 12th, "Election 2012 Trial Heat: Obama vs. Romney."

It's going to take a few more days of polling to really get a feel for Ryan's impact, although Gallup also reports that the response to Ryan is historically low for veep selections, "Reaction to Ryan as VP Pick Among Least Positive Historically: But Republicans more OK with Ryan compared with past vice presidential candidates."

More on this later...

Croydon 12-Year-Old Tia Sharp 'Smothered', Body Found in 'Bin Bag: Murder Rocks Britain After Glorious Olympic Games

They threw her in the trash. She was murdered and thrown in a "bin bag," a trashcan liner.

A bit story, at The Sun UK, "Tia 'smothered' and body found in binbag in loft" (via Twitter)":

TRAGIC Tia Sharp was "smothered" and her body was found wrapped in a black sheet and bin liner in the loft of her step-grandfather's home.

The details emerged as Stuart Hazell appeared in court via video - charged with the schoolgirl's murder.

Police feared taking Stuart Hazell to Camberwell Green Magistrates Court in person could spark violence - with baying mobs trying to attack him.

More at Telegraph UK, "Tia Sharp: step-grandfather in court charged with murder amid attack fears."

And at London's Daily Mail, "Box-ticking coppers with no common sense, and why I despair that my old force took eight days to find Tia":

The Police have won praise for their smooth organisation and good humoured efficiency at the London Olympics.

But away from the razzmatazz of the Games, they have come in for severe criticism for their handling of the case of Tia Sharp, the 12-year-old schoolgirl whose body was found in the loft of her grandmother’s home in Croydon.

The subsequent murder charge brought against Stuart Hazell, the partner of Tia’s grandmother, has thrown into question the catalogue of errors the police seem to have made in this grim saga.

Continue reading.

Plus, a video from Telegraph UK, "Tributes laid at makeshift shrine for Tia Sharp."

CNN's Wolf Blitzer Schools Befuddled DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz!

I've got CNN on right now, and it's all Medicare all the time, and by the looks of Debbie What-An-Ass Schultz, the Dems haven't got a clue.

Here's Wolf correcting the DNC chair:

PREVIOUSLY: "Campaigns Spar Over Medicare."

Paul Ryan Heckled in Iowa (VIDEO)

Althouse has it, "Paul Ryan, heckled in Iowa, said 'We're used to this in Wisconsin'."

More at Instapundit, "PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: So the community organizers Obama n’ Axelrod have sent hecklers to Ryan’s speech in Iowa. Time to mirror them."

Lots of links at the post, but that first quote's from Monica Crowley on Twitter.

MORE at The Other McCain, "Iowa Flashback: August 2011" (via Memeorandum).