Fabulous Kate Upton is Cosmopolitan's November Cover Girl

She lovely.

See: "Kate Upton is Our November Cover Girl!"

Adam Greenberg Gets Second Chance to Bat in Major League Baseball

At the New York Times, "An At-Bat Worth Waiting For, Despite the Out."

The dude got beaned in his first trip to the plate in 2005, on the first pitch, while playing for the Chicago Cubs.

World Premiere Atlas Shrugged Part II

In Washington, D.C., via Reason.tv:

Barack Obama Unedited Video at Hampton University, 2007

Here's the last 9 minutes of the speech, including some of the key parts Hannity and Greta were playing tonight over and over again.

Marooned in Marin has the entire video, "(VIDEO) OBAMA'S RACE SPEECH - Seen On Hannity & Daily Caller."

The content is not particularly explosive. Word has it that some of this was broadcast at the time. Indeed, here's a YouTube clip that's time-stamped March 17, 2008, "Barack Obama Praising His Pastor Jeremiah Wright..."

But check Eliana Johnson at National Review, "The Most Controversial Quotes from Obama’s Hampton University Speech." (At Memeorandum.) I think his craven attacks on the Iraq war are worse. But then, Obama was the most antiwar Democrat in the Senate in 2007, and he's previewing his attacks on the Bush administration at that Hampton speech. That's really some disgusting shit, anti-American even.

ADDED: Bryan Preston has the segment from tonight's Hannity broadcast: "On Obama’s Other Race Speech."

Smokin' Christina Hendricks Boasts Beautiful Figure in Plunging Pink Dress for November Issue of Britain's Glamour Magazine

This lady does it again.

At London's Daily Mail, "Mad about the woman! Christina Hendricks shows off her hourglass curves in a plunging pink dress for sexy new shoot."

Previous Christina Hendricks blogging here.

American Crossroads: It's About Leadership

American Crossroads hammers President Clusterf-k:

Barack Obama, the Luckiest Candidate

From Edward Luce at the Financial Times, "Obama will need more than luck":

It must be hard being Barack Obama. Midway through his opponent’s latest calamity, the president last week sat down for a grilling by the five friendly ladies on The View, the daytime television chat show. At the start of what can be described as a gentle conversation, Mr Obama joked that he was mere “eye candy” for his hosts. The news media complained that Mr Obama only very rarely makes himself available for their more probing questions. But of course, smart politicians go to where the voters are. Whether he’s slow jammin’ with Jimmy Fallon or conceding a kiss to the First Lady at a sports game, the president knows what most people respond to. Mitt Romney, on the other hand. But I digress.

There can be little doubt that Mr Obama is a lucky candidate. This time four years ago, John McCain reminded everyone of his advancing age and dubious health by selecting a running mate who thought Africa was a country. After the financial meltdown, Mr McCain then made the rash error of calling for a suspension of the campaign. Mr Romney is on the verge of a similar fate.

Given the latest polls, which show Mr Obama with six- to 10-point leads in the key swing states, Republican donors are debating whether to divert cash to the congressional election, where they could at least hold up the firewall against Mr Obama. Paul Ryan, meanwhile, is looking for ways to salvage his credibility as a future White House contender. Such are the rumours that disorient failing campaigns.

So far, Mr Obama has played along mostly as a bystander. Staff at the president’s Facebook-style headquarters in Chicago may dispute that description (their targeting techniques are light years ahead of their rivals in Boston). But Mr Romney has inflicted most of the damage on himself. Last week he had the decency to admit it. “That’s not the campaign,” Mr Romney said in response to the fallout from of his infamous “47 per cent” remark at a private fundraiser. “That was me, right?”

Yet there are reasons to pause before agreeing with the comedian Jon Stewart’s declaration that Mr Obama is “the luckiest dude on the planet”. For one, debating is not Mr Obama’s strong point...

Continue reading.

Luce is a bit hard on Romney, and he doesn't factor in the corrupt Obama-Media, but it's true that O's riding on his lucky charms. Again, the debates could be the Romney game-changer, so we'll have to hold on to our seats. If we can trust the polls, there's a tightening in the race. A poor Obama showing tomorrow could make it tighter still.

CARTOON CREDIT: Nate Beeler.

Call a Terrorist a 'Savage'? How Uncivilized

From William McGurn, at the Wall Street Journal:

"In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."

So reads an advertisement that went up a week ago in New York City subway stations. Sponsored by Pamela Geller's American Freedom Defense Initiative, the ads were meant to provoke, and they did. Denunciations poured in, activists plastered "racist" and "hate speech" stickers over the ads, and an Egyptian-American activist even got herself arrested after spray-painting one poster pink.

Establishment opinion quickly rallied to a consensus. As the Washington Post put it, while the words could be read as "hateful," "an offensive ad" nonetheless has the "right to offend." A rabbi summed up the media orthodoxy in the headline over her column for CNN: "A right to hate speech, a duty to condemn."

Certainly that's one way to read this ad. Then again, most Americans probably read it the way it is written: Israel is a civilized nation under attack from people who do savage things in the name of jihad. Whatever the agenda of those behind this ad might be, the question remains: What part of that statement is not true?

Ah, but the use of the word "jihad" inherently indicts all Muslims, say the critics. There are millions of peaceful Muslims for whom jihad means only a spiritual quest. So why do so many people associate jihad with murder and brutality?

Might it be because violence is so often the jihadist's calling card? Might it be that some of these killers even incorporate the word jihad into the name of their terror organizations, e.g., Palestinian Islamic Jihad? That may not be the exclusive meaning of jihad, but surely it is one meaning—and the one that New York subway riders are most likely to bring to the word.

The same goes for "savage." Exhibit A is Oxford's online dictionary, which defines a savage as "a brutal or vicious person." There are innumerable Exhibit Bs, but let me invoke one of the most powerful.

This is a Reuters photo that ran on the New York Times front page for Sept. 1, 2004. It shows an Israeli bus after it had been blown up by a suicide bomber. Neither bloody nor gory, the photo is nonetheless deeply disturbing, because it shows the lifeless body of a young woman hanging out a window.

The Times news story added this detail about the reaction to that attack. "In Gaza," ran the report, "thousands of supporters of Hamas celebrated in the streets, and the Associated Press reported that one of the bombers' widows hailed the attack as 'heroic' and said her husband's soul was 'happy in heaven.' " What part of any of this is not savage?

Might it be because violence is so often the jihadist's calling card? Might it be that some of these killers even incorporate the word jihad into the name of their terror organizations, e.g., Palestinian Islamic Jihad? That may not be the exclusive meaning of jihad, but surely it is one meaning—and the one that New York subway riders are most likely to bring to the word.

The same goes for "savage." Exhibit A is Oxford's online dictionary, which defines a savage as "a brutal or vicious person." There are innumerable Exhibit Bs, but let me invoke one of the most powerful.

This is a Reuters photo that ran on the New York Times front page for Sept. 1, 2004. It shows an Israeli bus after it had been blown up by a suicide bomber. Neither bloody nor gory, the photo is nonetheless deeply disturbing, because it shows the lifeless body of a young woman hanging out a window.

The Times news story added this detail about the reaction to that attack. "In Gaza," ran the report, "thousands of supporters of Hamas celebrated in the streets, and the Associated Press reported that one of the bombers' widows hailed the attack as 'heroic' and said her husband's soul was 'happy in heaven.' " What part of any of this is not savage? ....

What a curiosity our new political correctness has made of our public spaces. Let your sex tape loose on the Internet and be rewarded with your own TV show; photograph a crucifix in a jar of urine and our museums will vie to exhibit it; occupy someone else's property and you will be hailed by the president for your keen social conscience.

But call people who blow up, behead and mutilate "savage"—and polite society will find you offensive.

Well, that's the progressive left for you.

These people are nothing short of evil traitorous vermin — they're a threat to American civilization.

Also at Atlas Shrugs, "WALL STREET JOURNAL IN SUPPORT OF ANTI-JIHAD ADS - CALL A TERRORIST A 'SAVAGE'? HOW UNCIVILIZED."

Lovely Blogging at Pirate's Cove

William works hard on those classic weekend roundups.

But really you gotta love those regular "If All You See..." updates, like this one.

Folks deserve a shout-out once in awhile. There's some excellent blogging at Pirate's Cove, and not just the babes.

Battle Over Unions Moves to California

At the New York Times, "California Is Latest Stage for Election Battle Over Unions":

LOS ANGELES — The battle to curb labor’s political clout has moved from Wisconsin to California, where wealthy conservatives are championing a ballot measure that would bar unions from donating to candidates. Labor leaders describe it as the starkest threat they have faced in a year of nationwide challenges to diminish their once-formidable power.

The measure, Proposition 32 on the November ballot, would prohibit both unions and corporations from making contributions, but the corporate provision is far less stringent than the one aimed at unions, analysts said. If passed, it would also bar unions from using automatic payroll deductions to raise money for political campaigns, a major source of labor’s political funding.

“This would be a big deal for unions if it passes since it would largely cut off their participation in state and local California politics,” said Daniel J. B. Mitchell, a professor emeritus at the U.C.L.A. Anderson School of Management.

The prospect that Proposition 32 could become law in an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has a rich history of union activism has alarmed labor leaders. A victory here, they argued, would pave the way for similar efforts across the nation.

“This is intended not to hobble us, this is intended to eviscerate us,” said Art Pulaski, the head of the California Labor Federation. “If they can do it in California, they can do it everywhere and anywhere.”

Well, it's good to see the thug union idiots quaking in their boots, although it's a poorly designed initiative, as I noted previously.

And see the Sacramento Bee as well, "More voters oppose Proposition 32 than support it, poll says."

An Explosion in News Gathering via Mobile Devices

At the Pew organizatinon's Project for Excellence in Journalism, "FUTURE OF MOBILE NEWS: THE EXPLOSION IN MOBILE AUDIENCES AND A CLOSE LOOK AT WHAT IT MEANS FOR NEWS."

The era of mobile digital technology has crossed a new threshold.

Half of all U.S. adults now have a mobile connection to the web through either a smartphone or tablet, significantly more than a year ago, and this has major implications for how news will be consumed and paid for, according to a detailed new survey of news use on mobile devices by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) in collaboration with The Economist Group.

At the center of the recent growth in mobile is the rapid embrace by Americans of the tablet computer. Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults, 22%, now own a tablet device-double the number from a year earlier. Another 3% of adults regularly use a tablet owned by someone else in their home. And nearly a quarter of those who don't have a tablet, 23%, plan to get one in the next six months. Even more U.S. adults (44%) have smartphones, according to the survey, up from 35% in May 2011.

News remains an important part of what people do on their mobile devices-64% of tablet owners and 62% of smartphone owners say they use the devices for news at least weekly, tying news statistically with other popular activities such email and playing games on tablets and behind only email on smartphones (not including talking on the phone). This means fully a third of all U.S. adults now get news on a mobile device at least once a week.

Mobile users, moreover, are not just checking headlines on their devices, although nearly all use the devices for the latest new[s] updates. Many also are reading longer news stories - 73% of adults who consume news on their tablet read in-depth articles at least sometimes, including 19% who do so daily. Fully 61% of smartphone news consumers at least sometimes read longer stories, 11% regularly.

And for many people, mobile devices are adding how much news they consume. More than four in ten mobile news consumers say they are getting more news now and nearly a third say they are adding new sources.

These findings and others in this report build upon a comprehensive study conducted by PEJ and The Economist Group a year ago that provided an in-depth look at news consumption on tablets among early adopters. The new report, which is based on a survey of 9,513 U.S. adults conducted from June-August 2012 (including 4,638 mobile device owners), probes mobile news habits more deeply across the wider population of users, looks at smart phone use as well, and examines the financial implications of those habits for news.

Continue reading.

Here's my blog's mobile URL: http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/?m=1.

I'll be adding some kind of sidebar announcement for mobile users, perhaps like the one at Pundette's.

I'm not a mobile user myself, although I'm in the market for a new cell phone, which will probably be an iPhone 5. I'll update with more information on that later.

Meanwhile, there's more at Poynter, "Mobile news habit grows, creating new business opportunity with old challenges." (Via Mediagazer.)

Did President Obama Exploit Mentally-Impaired Woman, Brittany: “A face of one of the 47%”?

Actually, I don't think so.

If Brittany wrote the letter to the Obama campaign herself, and it's a nice letter, then she should be treated just as any other Obama supporter. And the president's campaign shouldn't feel that there's anything wrong with using her letter in a campaign pitch. To do otherwise would be to treat Brittany unequally, which is clearly not what she wants, as evidence by her comments at the letter. (Or, at least she doesn't want to be treated as a welfare dependency freeloader.)

But see Charles C.W. Cooke at National Reviews, "Brittany vs. Julia":

There is so much that is heinous about Brittany being used for political gain in this way, but let’s start with the obvious thing, which is that neither Mitt Romney nor anybody running for office under the Republican banner is suggesting doing anything that would hurt her.

Continue reading.

Well, the really obvious thing, really, is that if Mitt Romney would have posted a comparable letter from a Down syndrome supporter he would have been raked over the coals of an inquisition the likes to make Tomás de Torquemada proud. But these are Democrats doing this, so even the outward inclination toward impropriety is suppressed, because progressives are oh so f-king tolerant.

That said, Ann Althouse wrote a passively acceptant post on this, just a tad ambiguous, suggesting that because she's a woman she found the story "affecting." She gets ripped in the comments, for example:

This is absurd. Obama's use of a retarded girl to counter Romney's 47-percent argument is a complete non sequitur. Althouse acknowledges as much, but goes on to say, in effect, that she doesn't care. Why? Because she's a woman. Which is even more of a non sequitur.

Just vote for Obama already. Waving the bloody shirt of an exploited retarded girl makes you look, um, retarded.

Lots more comments at the link.

High-Speed Skater Hits Deer

Or, "High-Speed Deer Hits Skater."

Either way, that had to hurt.

Watch it at the link.

The DC Metro Rail System 'Is Kowtowing to the Threat of Jihad Terrorism...'

Another essential entry, at Atlas Shrugs, "WASHINGTON TRANSIT AUTHORITY 'APPARENTLY CONSIDERS ADHERENTS TO ISLAM TO BE VIOLENT AND INCAPABLE OF RESPONDING TO CRITICAL, POLITICAL SPEECH IN OUR COUNTRY IN A CIVILIZED MANNER'."

Sara Underwood: Esquire's Hottest Woman of the Year

Lovely:

PREVIOUSLY: "Sara Jean Underwood on Twitter."

'Hold On Loosely'

Some overnight music, from .38 Special:

Latest Polling Shows Presidential Race Tightening

John Hinderaker offer a short and sweet analysis of the presidential horse race polling, "The Parade of Bad Polling, Continued." He's hammering CNN's polling, which I haven't looked at closely. But if CNN's at all like the New York Times, the survey's badly oversampling Democrats. And if so, the fact that new polls show the race tightening is doubly good for Mitt Romney. On election day Republican enthusiasm --- which has been much  more significant than the Democrats' --- should really put to rest all the conspiracies about skewed and unskewed polls. More at the Washington Post, "Obama, Romney in tight race nationally as first debate looms." (Via Memeorandum.)

IMAGE CREDIT: iOWNTHEWORLD.

Taliban Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 20 in Afghanistan, Including Nato Troops

The Drudge screen capture's from Instapundit, "The main headline reports the 2,000 military deaths in Afghanistan, but below the fold there’s this: MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: OBAMA PLANS $450 MILLION CASH FOR EGYPT…":

We can’t afford this administration’s foreign policies anymore than we can afford its economic policies.

No, we can't.

Here's the report on the Afghanistan suicide attack, at Australia's Herald Sun, "Taliban claims responsibility for Afghan suicide bomber that killed 20":

A SUICIDE bomber has torn through an Afghan-NATO foot patrol in a crowded city, killing at least 20 people, including three foreign troops and their interpreter, officials said.

Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack near a market in the eastern city of Khost. Six Afghan police and 10 civilians were also killed, and 62 were wounded, provincial governor's spokesman Baryalai Rawan, told AFP.

Authorities had earlier given a death toll of four Afghan police and six civilians.

"Today at around 8:30 am (local time) a suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted a joint patrol in Khost city in a crowded area," the governor's office said.

NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed that three NATO service members and an ISAF-contracted interpreter had been killed in the attack.

The Taliban Islamists said on their website that the suicide attack was carried out by "a hero mujahid, Shohaib, from Kunduz", claiming that eight foreigners and six Afghan soldiers were killed.

And ICYMI, see Victor Davis Hanson's piece, at National Review, "President Ethelred":

Like old King Ethelred the Unready, who either had no counsel or had no sense, or both, and often paid the Danegeld rather than attempt to deter the Norsemen, so Barack Obama and his lieutenants still believe that they can both appease radical Islam and convince others that is not what they are doing....

The murder of Ambassador Stevens may well have been the most horrific killing in our nation’s diplomatic history. The administration’s original narrative — that the ambassador got separated from his security detail, suffocated amid the smoke, and was found unconscious by well-meaning Libyans who, in concern, rushed him to the hospital — cannot be true. Some disturbing rumors and evidence later emerged to the effect that Stevens may have had no real security detail to speak of, but was helped only by the brave ad hoc service of some private security contractors, who gave their lives to save an American diplomat without military support. More disturbing even than the absence of adequate military security was the likelihood that Stevens was attacked viciously by the mob, perhaps sexually brutalized by it, and then taunted by his killers, before being dumped in the street. In the long history of attacks on our embassies, I cannot think of a comparable instance where an ambassador was caught alone, mobbed, tortured, and photographed in extremis — or where an administration was so averse to disclosing any details of his demise.

Obama genuinely seems to believe that he, his administration, our present foreign policy, and America 2012 are somehow not the real objects of hate of the Arab Street mobs. That disconnect was also the theme of his mythmaking in Cairo, of his al-Arabiya interview, and of his apologetic commentary to the French and the Turks: A pre-Obama America was hubristic, insensitive, and culpable for damaged bilateral relations and would be acknowledged as such by an Obama America.

When Daniel Ortega enumerated the crimes of the United States in the presence of the president, Barack Obama did not defend his country, but simply shrugged, “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.” In other words, Obama felt that while his country may not have been innocent, he, a mere toddler at the time, most certainly was — and that he is innocent now as well.

In the context of the Middle East, Obama is thus naturally confused by the violence. He had assumed the Islamic mobs realize that America changed after 2008. So while Muslim complaints against the United States certainly had some validity at one time, such writs can no longer be valid after Obama assumed the presidency. The Arab Street could not possibly be angry at Barack Obama, the Nobel laureate and sympathetic supporter of Arab Muslims. The murdering must be an artifact, a fluke brought on by some right-wing, provocative American zealot, whose constitutionally protected rights to obnoxious free expression are overshadowed by the damage he has done in giving millions the impression that a reset America of 2012 still bears some resemblance to the America of 1776 to 2008.

We can see this disconnect in both the serious and the trivial: from Obama’s use of the adjective “natural” to describe unhinged mobs attacking U.S. properties over a video trailer, to his new personalized campaign version of the American flag. In that sense, one cannot entirely damn Mr. Morsi as he lectures America on its shortcomings — given that much of his complaint merely follows up on Obama’s own. Thus he may feel that he is ingratiating himself with the administration by channeling the Cairo speech.

If Obama were a conservative Republican, a George W. Bush for example, the media narrative of Libyagate would be one of an asleep, incompetent president, lieutenants who were brazenly mendacious, an incompetent secretary of state, and an administration conspiracy of silence — juxtaposed with a wider story of a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, an abandonment of any influence in Iraq, a refusal to recognize the situation in Syria and Egypt — and impotence as a war looms between Iran and Israel.

Will we ever know the circumstances that led to the murder of Ambassador Stevens? Only when government auditors and inquirers feel free to find and disclose the truth, which probably means sometime after the Obama administration is well out of office.

I'll have more later from the President Clusterf-k Chronicles.

Sunday Cartoons

On Monday, because Wordsmith at Flopping Aces was running late yesterday.

See, "Sunday (Evening) Funnies."

And see Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."

CARTOON CREDIT: Net Right Daily.

Muslims Burn Buddhist Temples in Bangladesh

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Muslims in Bangladesh torch Buddhist temples over Facebook image." (There's video here.)

And at Atlas Shrugs, "Bangladesh: Muslims Torch Buddhist Temples, Homes":

As the West continues to abridge its freedoms, sanction the most violent and extreme ideology on the face of the earth, and destroy those who dare speak against the sharia, the global jihad rages on ........ burning, slaughtering and making life hell on earth for non-Muslims in Muslim countries.

Savages.

Read it all at the link.