Libya Terrorists Bragged About Attack on U.S. Consulate

Eli Lake keeps digging away at this story, at the Daily Beast, "Intercepts Show Attackers on U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Bragged to Al Qaeda" (at Memeorandum):

Conversations monitored by U.S. intelligence show Ansar al-Sharia jihadists boasted to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb about the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and others—more evidence the assault was not a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Muslim video.

In the communications, members of Ansar al-Sharia (AAS) bragged about their successful attack against the American consulate and the U.S. ambassador, according to three U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to The Daily Beast anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

At this stage there is no consensus inside the U.S. intelligence community that AQIM planned the attack, but the communications are more evidence that the attack was no spontaneous reaction to an Internet video, as the Obama administration had said for the first nine days after the attack.

This week, Obama administration officials are coming around to the view that the assault on the consulate in Benghazi was a planned terrorist attack. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said, “As we determined the details of what took place there and how that attack took place, it became clear that there were terrorists who planned that attack.”

After the attack, there were multiple pieces of intelligence that strongly pointed to al Qaeda. The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that early intelligence pointed to al Qaeda, including strong leads on four of the attackers, and the location of one of those attackers. That said, the intelligence community did not offer Congress or senior Obama administration officials any consensus analysis on the perpetrator of the attack in those early days after it occurred...

Continue reading.

Plus, here's an interesting piece at Foreign Policy, "Kerry, Rice position themselves on Benghazi attack."

I'll be interested to see why Susan Rice continued to claim a spontaneous attack in Libya days after the event and in the midst of administration knowledge of the truth, including information on the Ambassador's notebook. Is she covering up for the president? What did she know and when did she know it?

More later...

Americans for Prosperity Ohio Bus Tour – Obama's Failing America

Robert Stacy McCain's got some excellent coverage.

See, "VIDEO: AFP’s Jen Ridgely Talks About ‘Obama’s Failing Agenda’ Ohio Bus Tour" and "Get on the Bus! AFP Leads ‘Obama’s Failing Agenda Tour’ Across Ohio."

BONUS: "ROMNEY RALLY IN TOLEDO: Huge Crowd Stands in Line in the Rain!"

Kirsten Powers: Media May Be Complicit in Another Terrorist Attack on America

The media's certainly helping to perpetuate a cover up, and if it turns out that information on planning was known prior to the attack, then that would be complicity in terrorism.

See Kirsten Powers on Fox News yesterday, via Right Scoop, "Kirsten Powers: The media may be complicit in another terrorist attack on America."

Red States' Income Growing Faster Than Blue States'

Some of the income gains were due to an increase in transfer payments in Republican states, but the key is that in a number of red states the rise in income is driven by energy-friendly economic development, and the differences between the Democrat states are dramatic.

At USA Today:

Income is growing much faster in Republican-leaning "red states" than in Democratic-tilting "blue states" or the pivotal swing states that will decide the 2012 presidential election, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Personal income in 23 red states has risen 4.6% since the recession began in December 2007, after adjusting for inflation. Income is up just 0.5% in 15 blue states and Washington, D.C., during that time. In the dozen swing states identified by USA TODAY that could vote either way Nov. 6, income has inched ahead 1.4% in 4 ½ years. The big drivers of red state income growth: energy and government benefit payments such as food stamps.

By contrast, Democratic blue states are more affluent but were hit harder by the downturn. Connecticut, dependent on the financial industry, suffered the largest income drop except swing-state Nevada. Yet Connecticut residents still make $10,000 a year more on average than people in fast-growing North Dakota.

When averaged nationally, the robust gains in red states and meager gains in blue states produced a national growth rate remarkably similar to that in the swing states.

USA TODAY analyzed income data released this week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis to compare how red, blue and swing states have fared through June 30. The difference in income gains is partly because blue states are richer and more populated than red states — 42% of the nation's income vs. 30% in red states. Also, the economic recovery since the recession officially ended in June 2009 has been distributed unequally around the country.

North Dakota, a red state, tops the nation in income growth thanks to an oil boom. Other major energy states — Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas — are solidly Republican, polls show. Poor, southern red states depend heavily on government transfers for income and benefited from increases in Medicaid and other federal programs.

There's more at the link, including a very cool graphic.

Netanyahu Demands 'Red Line' on Iran

At the Wall Street Journal, "Israeli Leader Calls for Plan on Iran."

Plus, see Alana Goodman, at Commentary, "AP, Reuters Reportedly Post Bibi “Heil” Photos."

Johnny Lewis, 'Sons of Anarchy' Star, Allegedly Kills Landlady Then Dies in Fall

A frankly bizarre story, at the Los Angeles Times, "'Sons of Anarchy' actor was unraveling."

And at London's Daily Mail, "Revealed: Scientology past of Katy Perry's ex-lover and star of The O.C. who 'killed his 81-year-old landlady' and died in roof fall six DAYS after leaving jail."

Free Obama Phones

Update on the 47 percent, via Marooned in Marin:

'Wake the F—k Up'

At the New York Post, "Samuel L. Jackson debuts profanity-laced pro-Obama ad."

Robert Spencer: 'Any Moral Person Would Support Our Campaign'

Well, radical leftists like Mona Eltahawy aren't moral persons, but listen to Robert explain things at the clip:

And at Jihad Watch, "NYC MTA refuses to buckle to Leftist/Islamic supremacist intimidation, rules political ads will continue to run."

Security Fears Hobble Libya Attack Investigation

The story is becoming way too big for the big media outlets to sweep under the rug. The New York Times is now doing the kind of critical reporting that we should have seen from the first day of this debacle. See, "Security Fears Hobble Inquiry of Libya Attack":

BENGHAZI, Libya — Sixteen days after the death of four Americans in an attack on a United States diplomatic mission here, fears about the near-total lack of security have kept F.B.I. agents from visiting the scene of the killings and forced them to try to piece together the complicated crime from Tripoli, more than 400 miles away.

Investigators are so worried about the tenuous security, people involved in the investigation say, that they have been unwilling to risk taking some potential Libyan witnesses into the American Embassy in Tripoli. Instead, the investigators have resorted to the awkward solution of questioning some witnesses in cars outside the embassy, which is operating under emergency staffing and was evacuated of even more diplomats on Thursday because of a heightened security alert.

“It’s a cavalcade of obstacles right now,” said a senior American law enforcement official who is receiving regular updates on the Benghazi investigation and who described the crime scene, which has been trampled on, looted and burned, as so badly “degraded” that even once F.B.I. agents do eventually gain access “it’ll be very difficult to see what evidence can be attributed to the bad guys.”

Piecing together exactly how Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died here would be difficult even under the best of conditions. But the volatile security situation in post-Qaddafi Libya has added to the challenge of determining whether it was purely a local group of extremists who initiated the fatal assault or whether the attackers had ties to international terrorist groups, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested Wednesday may be the case.

The Libyan government has advised the F.B.I. that it cannot assure the safety of the American investigators in Benghazi. So agents have been conducting interviews from afar, relying on local Libyan authorities to help identify and arrange meetings with witnesses to the attack and working closely with the Libyans to gauge the veracity of any of those accounts.

“There’s a chance we never make it in there,” said a senior law enforcement official.

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "Benghazi-Gate."

Benghazi-Gate

The Blaze reports, "'Benghazi-Gate': Lawmakers Demand Answers as Obama Administration's Inconsistent Libya Story Falls Apart."

And see the editorial at the Wall Street Journal, "The Libya Debacle":

In his United Nations speech on Tuesday, President Obama talked about the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and declared that "there should be no doubt that we will be relentless in tracking down the killers and bringing them to justice." What he didn't say is how relentless he'll be in tracking down the security lapses and intelligence failures that contributed to the murders. Let's say there's some doubt about that.

None of the initial explanations offered by the White House and State Department since the assault on the Benghazi consulate has held up. First the Administration blamed protests provoked by an amateurish anti-Islam clip posted on YouTube. Cue Susan Rice, the U.N. Ambassador and leading candidate for Secretary of State in a second Obama term: "What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction . . . as a consequence of the video, that people gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent."

Administration officials also maintained that the diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt, the site of the first attacks this September 11, were properly defended and that the U.S. had no reason to prepare for any attack. "The office of the director of National Intelligence has said we have no actionable intelligence that an attack on our post in Benghazi was planned or imminent," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week, calling the security measures in place there "robust."

Cell phone video footage and witness testimony from Benghazi soon undercut the Administration trope of an angry march "hijacked" by a few bad people. As it turned out, the assault was well-coordinated, with fighters armed with guns, RPGs and diesel canisters, which were used to set the buildings on fire. Ambassador Chris Stevens died of smoke inhalation. Briefing Congress, the Administration changed its story and said the attacks were pre-planned and linked to al Qaeda.

You'd think this admission would focus attention on why the compound was so vulnerable to begin with. But the Administration wants to avoid this conversation. The removal of all staff from Benghazi, including a large component of intelligence officers, would also seem to hinder their ability to investigate the attacks and bring the killers to justice.

Journalists have stayed on the case, however, and their reporting is filling in the Administration's holes. On Friday, our WSJ colleagues showed that starting in spring, U.S. intelligence had been worried about radical militias in eastern Libya...

Imagine the uproar if, barely a month before Election Day, the Bush Administration had responded to a terrorist strike—on Sept. 11 no less—in this fashion. Obfuscating about what happened. Refusing to acknowledge that clear security warnings were apparently ignored. Then trying to shoot the messengers who bring these inconvenient truths to light in order to talk about anything but a stunning and deadly attack on U.S. sovereign territory.

Four Americans lost their lives in Benghazi in a terrorist attack that evidence suggests should have been anticipated and might have been stopped. Rather than accept responsibility, the Administration has tried to stonewall and blame others. Congress should call hearings to hold someone accountable for this debacle.

Well, a good chunk of the media are complicit in helping to cover up the story. As I've argued, this is shaping up to be a massive scandal and I'm glad GOP members of Congress are starting to make a stink. At the clip Senator Bob Corker calls the administration's stonewalling a disgrace, it's "Benghazi-Gate." That's got quite a ring to it. Indeed, this morning Da Tech Guy tweeted that had such events taken place during the Nixon administration, "Tricky Dick" would have been able to serve out his 8 years in office uninterrupted. It's simply unreal what's happening during this administration and the American people need a full hearing.

Check back for developments...

Israel Must Be 'Eliminated'

At the Wall Street Journal:

'To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

—George Orwell

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at the United Nations today, which also happens to be Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. The timing is apt because when it comes to Iran and Israel, the hardest thing for some people to see or hear is what Iranian leaders say in front of the world's nose.

"Iran has been around for the last seven, 10 thousand years. They [the Israelis] have been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in history," Mr. Ahmadinejad told reporters and editors in New York on Monday.

"We do believe that they have found themselves at a dead end and they are seeking new adventures in order to escape this dead end. Iran will not be damaged with foreign bombs. We don't even count them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase, they [the Israelis] represent minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated."

Note that word—"eliminated." When Iranians talk about Israel, this intention of a final solution keeps coming up. In October 2005, Mr. Ahmadinejad, quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini, said Israel "must be wiped off the map." Lest anyone miss the point, the Iranian President said in June 2008 that Israel "has reached the end of its function and will soon disappear off the geographical domain."

He has company among Iranian leaders. In a televised speech in February, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called Israel a "cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut," adding that "from now on, in any place, if any nation or any group that confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help. We have no fear of expressing this."

Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of the armed forces, added in May that "the Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel."

Continue reading.

In Spain, Austerity and Hunger — and Riots

The New York Times had this report on Tuesday, "Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal."

And then that night, intense rioting broke out:

Der Spiegel has more, "Autumn of Discontent: Turmoil over Austerity Hits Spain and Greece."

FBI Agents Still Not in Benghazi, Libya; Consulate Still Not Secure

Yet more f-ked up news on the administration's Muslim world clusterf-k, from CNN, amazingly:

'It's the closest thing to real freedom I've ever known...'

This is a great story, at the Los Angeles Times, "A Utah man and his ghost town: a love story":

WOODSIDE, Utah — Roy Pogue has loved a lot of things in his 63 years — like his wife, Chris, and her little Daffy Duck tattoo, not to mention the couple's six children.

Yet few things have made his heart go flip-flop more than a dry-gulch piece of land out in the middle of Utah's nowhere.

Sometimes, love truly is blind. A lot of words describe Pogue's backside-of-beyond parcel, where rust rules and the thermometers have all surrendered to the cold and the heat. One of those words is Godforsaken.

More than 700 dusty, rocky acres in all, the spread sits along the trickling Price River, under the boxy shadow of the Book Cliffs. Like Pogue himself, a man in bib overalls, handlebar mustache and well-oiled cowboy hat, the property exudes a bit of Wild West panache: At its core is a creaky old ghost town complete with an abandoned gold mine, cold-water geyser and a supposed onetime hide-out for the outlaw Butch Cassidy when he wasn't riding with the Sundance Kid.

But now, in a move that breaks Pogue's heart, he's put it all up for sale. Despite its scruffy "as is" condition, he's asking a pretty price: $3.9 million.

Potential buyers might see only isolation and neglect: a jumble of abandoned trailers, water tanks, squat-looking shacks and the shell of an old service station, all surrounded by a fence to keep out vandals.

If most towns rise up out of the desert, this one just lies there. But for Pogue, the place has been a refuge.

The little hamlet of Woodside, located along a lonely rural highway three hours southeast of Salt Lake City, was already long abandoned when Pogue settled here, but that suited him just fine. A disabled veteran from the nearby town of Moab who had a hard time finding steady carpentry work, Pogue says that in his 20 years here, he's ruled his own fate: He's been a one-man sheriff, judge, jury and good Samaritan.

Over the years, he made ends meet by ranching, farming (yes, farming) and running his gas station. And for a long time he made it work. For 70 miles along isolated U.S. Route 6, between the towns of Price and Green River, it's been just Pogue and a herd of free-range llamas. But maybe not for much longer.

After decades of sweat, labor, battles with the federal government over cattle and water rights, fights with his wife, who prefers people to llamas — and, finally, declining health — Pogue performed the toughest chore of his life: pounding in the for-sale sign.

"This place has meant so much to me," he said, sweating under a relentless midday sun. "It's the closest thing to real freedom I've ever known in my life. At this price, it might be a cold day in hell before someone buys it. And maybe that's good."

RTWT.

Obama's Pitbull Media

I think "lapdog media" is too mild. Obama's press flacks are pitbulls, and they're lethal.

See Mona Charen, "The Obama Press Votes Early":

“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring.”  — Ann Romney

Mrs. Romney’s exasperation with conservative critics is understandable. The mainstream press has been like a school of piranhas swarming around her husband. To receive fire from her own side as well — even constructive advice — may seem too much to bear.

Mitt Romney is facing perhaps the most corrupt and tendentious coverage in presidential history as members of the fourth estate eschew any semblance of integrity in their attempt to skew interpretations in favor of their pinup, Mr. Obama.

The examples would fill volumes....

In the first hours of the violence that engulfed U.S. embassies on September 11, Romney was lambasted by the press for criticizing a sitting president and for issuing a statement prematurely. Of course, when Obama criticized Bush in 2007 for an attack on a base in Afghanistan, he received no such condemnation.

We are now witnessing the slow-motion implosion of the Obama-administration narrative about what happened in Benghazi. Not only did the Obama administration insist, from the beginning and before ascertaining the facts, that the attack on our ambassador and three other Americans was a case of a protest gone wild over an Internet movie, they maintained this obvious deception for nearly two weeks.

As early as September 12, Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) and officials at the Defense and State departments were questioning the White House version. “This was a coordinated attack, more of a commando-style event. It had both coordinated fire, direct fire, indirect fire,” Rogers commented the day after the attack.

Yet four days later, Obama sent U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to the Sunday-morning political shows to insist that the attack on Americans was basically a negative movie review. Some news organizations are reporting that there was no protest over the Internet film in Benghazi at all, just a coordinated terror attack featuring a former Guantanamo detainee. Do not expect days or weeks of coverage about what a scandal this represents, about the administration’s failure to provide adequate security to American diplomats, about the administration’s persistence in a lie long after it was obvious that the attack in Libya was a terrorist strike.

There's more at that top link. I'm almost in shock thinking of how reprehensible the Libya debacle is, and that's without even factoring in the administration's cover up and the media's enabling. Team Romney should not let this story fall by the wayside. It's a story of perhaps the most corrupt and incompetent foreign policy in American history, made worse by the fawning Obama-media.

What Do Radical Islamists and Progressives Have in Common?

From Donald Thornton, at ThyBlackMan, "Radical Islamists and Radical Leftists: The eerie similarities" (via Instapundit):

These events [across the Mulsim world] have shed light on a disturbing parallel that I believe must be examined. The eerie similarities between radical Islamist all over the world and radical Leftist that reside right here in America. Because their ultimate goals are synonymic. A nation; dare I say a world, under submission to their will.

I believe these two ideologies are clear and present dangers to America and the world at large. Because both; at their core seek to suppress any speech or expression that is contrary to their worldview. Free speech has to be the first and most protected foundational pillar of any new nation.  And it must be re-enforced perpetually in any existing nation that has adopted it.

The ideology of radical Islam has no place for dissent, compromise, freedom of expression or speech. It seeks to rule by the sheer force of fear, intimidation, criminalization and tyranny. Terrorism is its dominant mode of operations. It will not tolerate any opposing views or critiques. To say or do anything that it deems insulting of its worldview is worthy of imprisonment or even death. Its influence is so strong that it persuades the emotionally unstable to commit horrific acts terrorism. Its desire is total submission to its will.

Likewise in the same way contemporary liberalism/progressivism uses the same M.O. The ideology of the radical Left has no place for dissent or freedoms that do not comport to their worldview. It seeks to intimidate via boycotts, petitions, protests’ and lawsuits.

Dare to speak ill about or challenge any of its holy doctrines, which include: Abortion on demand, Gay Rights/Marriage, Evolution, Unions/Collective Bargaining Rights, Open-ended Civil Rights, Global Warming, Reducing Social Programs, just to name a few…

And the campaign of policing, isolating and ideologically terror begin with a vengeance, a type of jihad against those who oppose its failed worldview.

Lock up that thought criminal.

Karl Rove Breaks Down the Obama-Enabling Public Opinion Polls

From O'Reilly's show last night:

That New York Times poll is a disastrous outlier. I wrote about it here: "Skewed and Unskewed Polls." The race is going to tighten, but again, I'm looking for a Mitt Romney lead in some of these surveys. Once you throw out the bad samples, Obama's still leading. The Republican ticket needs a game changer. And that's got to be the debates or it's simply over.

But check back for more...

Obama Administration Knew It Was al-Qaeda Within 24 Hours

This story is not new to me, since the word's been out for awhile, but the coverage is getting wider and more critical.

From Eli Lake, at the Daily Beast, "U.S. Officials Knew Libya Attacks Were Work of Al Qaeda Affiliates."

At the video is Rep. Buck McKeon, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He's outraged at the incompetence and fraud this administration's foisting on the American people:

That clip's from last Friday, but Ed Morrissey has an update from yesterday, "House Armed Services chair: Obama admin hiding truth on Libya until after election."

This is the scandal of the Obama administration's tenure in office. The administration lied to the American people, and top officials told reporters to "f*ck off" when questions starting getting too hot. The press is behind the curve, but can't let it go forever. The New York Times has this out in today's paper, for example, "Clinton Suggests Link to Qaeda Offshoot in Deadly Libya Attack."

I'll have more...

In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man

I'd post every single entry at Atlas Shrugs if I could. Pamela's blog is off the charts with moral clarity. Head over there for an historic tutorial on freedom of speech and moral backbone in the face of totalitarianism.

These Are Not 'Bumps in the Road'

An excellent ad.

Also at the Los Angeles Times, "Romney hits Obama for calling Middle East troubles 'bumps in road'."

President Obama Speech to U.N. General Assembly, September 25, 2012

The full speech is here.

And Jennifer Rubin just rips into Obama, rightly --- and righteously --- so, "Obama’s speech at the United Nations":

President Obama is so soaked in the State Department/Western European/ leftist intellectual goo of moral relativism and disdain for core American values that I doubt he understood how offensive were his remarks at the United Nations today.

After fessing up that our embassy people were killed by terrorists (he doesn’t say what kind, however) and reciting that violence is never justified he then once again denounced the anti-Islam video. And he delivers this:

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.

Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims and Shia pilgrims. It’s time to heed the words of Gandhi, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.”

Together, we must work towards a work where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies. That’s the vision we will support.

Where to begin?

Continue reading.

Michelle Malkin Slams Shameless Lying Liar Stepanie Cutter's 'War on Women' Lies

Michelle's on fire, as usual:

Sarah Shahi

Via Maxim:

GOP Bid for Senate Control Fading?

I don't know actually if the GOP's lost all hope on regaining the Senate, but this piece at the Los Angeles Times is reasonable: "Democrats gain favor in battle for Senate."

One thing noted there (and elsewhere recently) is that there's a noticeable uptick in voter optimism on the economy, which should dampen prospects for Republicans a bit. I'm reminded of 2008 and the financial crash of late October. McCain was still running strong in the race and I thought he might still win. But his campaign imploded and got all off track --- with the candidate suspending his campaign to return to the Senate to work on a bailout package that ended up not being the final bailout package --- and economic issues sealed the election for Obama and the Democrats. This year unemployment rates and presidential approval ratings were trending against Obama's reelection, but O's been seeing his approval ratings spike up around 50 percent in most recent polls. While there's some debate on the accuracy of the polls, it's clear that we're not in as deep a trough of pessimism that would elevate the GOP ticket to an easy win. There's still pessimism --- Americans still think the country's on the wrong track --- but that pessimism isn't as pronounced as it's been in earlier months.

More on all of this as we go along...

Joe Compton, 11, Struck by Lightning in Swindon, England

I imagine this is everyone's worst nightmare, and it's happened to an 11-year-old boy in Britain.

See Telegraph UK, "Weather: boy, 11, struck by lightning in front of classmates leaving school." He'd be dead if it weren't for the paramedics, who, on the scene quickly, were able to revive him. And yet he's still fighting for his life. I'll be saying prayers for him.

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Schoolboy, 11, left fighting for his life after being struck by lightning outside his school."

Skewed and Unskewed Polls

I mentioned this morning that I'm not going to engage in conspiracies about how all the polling is biased toward Obama and the Democrats. Some polls are biased because any poll will have a systematic error as a feature of the methodology. Whether there's an actual demonstrable left-wing tilt to a survey will depend on a lot of factors. Polling organizations will adjust their poll samples to reflect larger census data for various demographic groups, for example. A survey can adjust samples to reflect partisan identification trends for some earlier time period, like the last election. A lot of conservatives, Ed Morrissey comes to mind, likes to compare polling samples to the level of partisan turnout in previous elections. That makes sense but such analyses rely on conjecture and estimation. The factors that contributed to turnout in a prior election may or may not recur in the upcoming election, so estimating polling bias against present trends such as voter enthusiasm is basically unscientific. There's some excellent learned guesswork going on, but conclusions are unsystematic.

So again I'm interested in all this right-wing angst at the current polling trends. My recent piece at PJ Media piqued my interest especially, since the comments there were decidedly unhappy with the suggestion that Romney was imploding, an argument based on actual campaign flubs as well as a growing gap in most of the recent polls. The fact is, President Obama's bump after the conventions has been significant and sustained. That should be non-controversial. That said, any poll putting Obama up by 9 or 10 points over Romney in the swing states is likely an extreme outlier, as Reliapundit argued today, "MORE BS POLLS FROM THE LEGACY MEDIA: NYTIMES HAS OBAMA NEARLY 10% UP IN OHIO AND FLORIDA." Other polls show those states as closely fought, within the margin of error. I expect at this point Obama is up in both those states by just a couple of points, and if so, GOP voter enthusiasm could indeed put Romney ahead on election day. So it ain't over until its over, no doubt.

That said, let's check in with Jay Cost, at the Weekly Standard, "Are the Polls Tilted Toward Obama?"

I can't get a pullout quote from that, so read it all. Cost first touches on some of the points I've raised above about weighting and estimation of previous voter coalitions. But the more interesting thing is Cost's historical analysis of partisan retention. The GOP has a stronger record of keeping partisans in its column on election day. If those trends hold for 2012, then as we get closer to election day, the Obama convention bounce should largely evaporate and Romney should hold a slight advantage if partisan defection rates are factored in. All of this assumes that survey samples are not biased towards Democrats, and that "true partisanship" is teased out with follow up questions for those who first identify as independents. The Monkey Cage has a worthwhile post on that, "Polling Biases and Their Potential Impacts."

So basically, all this big hubbub about 10-point Obama margins in Ohio and Florida is indeed bullshit. But those polls showing Obama with a slight edge are probably accurate, especially when compared to polling trends over the last few months and when compared to contemporaneous surveys. As I said this morning, I'll be more excited when I see some polls with Romney holding a slight edge rather than Obama. So far Romney hasn't been able to pull up neck-and-neck in the horse race. That's what should be worrying conservatives --- Romney's year-long failure to secure an edge in the polls --- not the so-called huge left-wing bias to the entire polling universe. I just don't think there's that big a leftist bias, and I'm surprised to see some on the right entertaining conspiracies. On that point I don't normally refer to Erick Erickson, who I personally think is an asshole, but on this he's right, "On Polls and Polling":

I do not believe the polls are all wrong. I do not believe there is some intentional, orchestrated campaign to suppress the GOP vote by showing Mitt Romney losing. I actually believe that Mitt Romney trails Barack Obama. I think Republicans putting their hopes in the polls all being wrong is foolish. But I also believe the polls are reflecting a bigger Democratic strength than is really there.

More at the link.

And check Allahpundit at Hot Air for the backlash he's getting for posting polls critical of the GOP ticket, "Which polls are, or aren’t, legitimate?" Allah's describing the kind of harsh response I got at PJ Media last week.

No doubt there'll be more to this story, but I'll close with some red meat for the hyper-partisans looking to utterly destroy the Dems on November 6. It's Dick Morris with an extremely bullish take on the race, which has even Sean Hannity saying, nah (via Nice Deb):

Latest New York Times Poll Shows Obama Pulling Out Huge Lead in Ohio and Florida

I'm expecting the race to tighten, especially in the swing states, but NYT indicates that O's pulling out a commanding lead.

What's up with that?

Astute Bloggers has the lowdown, "MORE BS POLLS FROM THE LEGACY MEDIA: NYTIMES HAS OBAMA NEARLY 10% UP IN OHIO AND FLORIDA":

THE SAMPLE DOESN'T REFLECT THE LIKELY TURNOUT AT ALL.

THE SAMPLE HAS 9% MORE DEMS THAN REPUBLICANS, AND GIVES OBAMA A 9% LEAD.

IF THE DEMS TURNOUT LIKE THEY DID IN THE LAST ELECTION, THEN OBAMA LOSES.

OBAMA'S WEAK FUNDRAISING AND SMALL CROWDS OFFERS INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF THAT HE IS NOT AS POPULAR NOW AS HE WAS IN 2008.

THE 2010 ELECTION PROVES THE GOP IS MORE ENERGIZED - AS DO ROMNEY RYAN CROWDS AND FUNDRAISING.

That's solid, although I'm interested to see some comparative polling data. The Florida Times Union has this, for example, "President Obama holds slight lead over Mitt Romney in Times-Union Florida poll" (via Memeorandum):

Overwhelming majorities with black and Hispanic voters have helped President Barack Obama to a slim lead in the Times-Union’s Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion Research Florida Presidential Poll released Tuesday.

Among likely voters, 49 percent favor Obama for November’s election and 46 percent like Mitt Romney.

One percent backed other candidates and 4 percent were undecided.

The poll of 540 Floridians has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

A Washington Post poll, also released Tuesday, shows Obama leading Romney, 51 percent to 47 percent among likely Florida voters. Among all registered voters in the state, the poll shows Obama up by 9 points.

Well now, that's not quite so dramatic.

That said, I'm not going to freak out with those right-wing polling conspiracies that have been making the rounds in the conservative fever swamps. Romney's trailing. He's been trailing for a long time. We need to see some swing states polling with Obama trailing before I'll be real confident about the GOP's prospects.

More at Memeorandum.

Elizabeth Warren Not Licensed to Practice Law in Massachusetts

William Jacobson has been on fire with his huge scoop on Elizabeth Warren's likely criminal misrepresentations while holding her teaching position at Harvard.

See, "Elizabeth Warren’s law license problem."

And the story's getting national coverage, which is great! See, "Elizabeth Warren’s law license problem on Fox News today."

BONUS: Idiot faux-libertarian Mark Thompson tried to smack down William, at the laughable League of Ordinary Gentlemen, "No, Elizabeth Warren Did Not Engage in the Unauthorized Practice of Law."

And in response, William made mincemeat of that idiot Thompson, "No, Mass. Board of Bar Overseers has not exonerated Elizabeth Warren."

EXTRA: IBD weighs in, "Elizabeth Warren Busted Defending Big Corporations Without Law License":

Warren is a proven liar, hypocrite and fraud, and ought not darken the halls of the U.S. Senate as an expert witness let alone a member of that august body.

Ouch.

The 10% President

Be sure to read this phenomenal editorial at the Wall Street Journal: "The annotated Obama: How 90% of the deficit becomes somebody else's fault."

Mona Eltahawy Defaces Pamela Geller's 'Savages' Ad at New York's Times Square Station

The New York Post reports, "EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Woman defaces 'anti-jihad' ad in Times Square station."

And there's more at Pamela's, "Mona Eltahawy Arrested for Assaulting Pro-Freedom Blogger While Defacing AFDI Pro-Freedom Ad." (Via Memeorandum.)


Eltahawy said she had a right to deface the advertisement, claiming that her actions were protected as "free speech." The police were obviously not pleased.

NFL's Substitute Officials Are a Joke

According to Bill Plaschke, at the Los Angeles Times, "NFL losing credibility with each blown call by replacement refs":

Hail Mary. Holy hell.

On the final play of the final game of one of the most shameful weekends in NFL history, a last-gasp pass from the Seattle Seahawks fell from the sky into the arms of the Green Bay Packers on Monday night.

Touchdown, Seattle. Chaos, NFL.

Three weeks of gross incompetence by unqualified replacement officials crystallized in two moments Monday night that pushed the league's integrity to the brink.

In one moment, Packers safety M.D. Jennings clearly intercepted a final-play pass while falling upon Seahawks receiver Golden Tate in the end zone, preserving an apparent 12-7 Green Bay win.

In the next moment, the replacement officials ruled that Tate had made the catch, and upheld that ruling after replay review, giving the Seahawks a 14-12 victory.

Said Packers Coach Mike McCarthy: "I've never seen anything like that in all my years in football."

Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman tweeted: "These games are a joke."

It's finally happened. After three weeks of forgetting the rules, losing track of the ball, and haphazardly administering this country's national pastime as if they were salesmen on vacation from Foot Locker, the replacement officials have finally done serious, irrevocable damage. The arrogant NFL's middle-school and small-college substitutes for the locked-out regular officials have finally, actually, literally made one wrong call that decided the outcome of a game.

It was one of the worst calls in the history of the league, yet it might turn out to be one of the best calls if humiliated Commissioner Roger Goodell was listening to the message it sent.

Give it up. Settle this labor dispute. Settle it now. Your power play didn't work.

That's a great piece. RTWT.

Plus, I guess it's no surprise, but the despicable progressives are trying to score political points on this, and over unions too. Amazing. See the consistently dishonest Steve Benen at Maddow's blog, "Scott Walker discovers the value of union workers." And at the anti-Israel, Soros-backed hate-site Think Progress, "Paul Ryan Demands Return of Unionized NFL Referees: ‘It Is Time to Get the Real Refs’." (At Memeorandum.)

For some reason I don't think there's an accurate comparison between the NFL officials' union and, say, public sector teachers unions. But then again, folks like Steve Benen and the Think Progress anti-Semites probably back public teacher sexual predators over abused children and their parents. Because that's what's happened to the public unions these days. They've been horribly denuded of any basic decency from the constituency they ostensibly serve. They're completely unaccountable, and they're literally harming children. It's the other way around with the NFL's temporary referees. They're harming the game and they're on the way out.

But the idiot progs don't care about excellence. They only care about union power. Screw 'em.

The Democrats' Ronald Reagan

You can't beat this, at Weasel Zippers, "Newsweek: Trig Truther Andrew Sullivan Declares Obama “The Democrats’ Ronald Reagan”…":

Another Newsweek slobber-fest courtesy of Andrew Sullivan. Nice to see Newsweek embracing a paranoid conspiracy theorist as its favorite columnist...

A slobber-fest, no doubt. From the article:

If Obama wins, to put it bluntly, he will become the Democrats’ Reagan. The narrative writes itself. He will emerge as an iconic figure who struggled through a recession and a terrorized world, reshaping the economy within it, passing universal health care, strafing the ranks of al -Qaeda, presiding over a civil-rights revolution, and then enjoying the fruits of the recovery. To be sure, the Obama recovery isn’t likely to have the same oomph as the one associated with Reagan—who benefited from a once-in-a-century cut of top income tax rates (from 70 percent to, at first, 50 percent, and then to 28 percent) as well as a huge jump in defense spending at a time when the national debt was much, much less of a burden. But Obama’s potential for Reagan status (maybe minus the airport-naming) is real. Yes, Bill Clinton won two terms and is a brilliant pol bar none, as he showed in Charlotte in the best speech of both conventions. But the crisis Obama faced on his first day—like the one Reagan faced—was far deeper than anything Clinton confronted, and the future upside therefore is much greater. And unlike Clinton’s constant triangulating improvisation, Obama has been playing a long, strategic game from the very start—a long game that will only truly pay off if he gets eight full years to see it through. That game is not only changing America. It may also bring his opposition, the GOP, back to the center, just as Reagan indelibly moved the Democrats away from the far left.

I read the whole thing.

This kind of story would have never been published back when I started out in college. It's a partisan puff piece. RAWMUSCLEGLUTE is creaming all over Obama. It's perverse. And it's riddled with errors, naturally, but we won't see a full-court press to get an apology and retraction, as was the case with Niall Ferguson's recent cover story slamming Obama. The left went batshit crazy over that one, Paul Krugman especially. But Ferguson had the facts down cold, literally unassailable, which further enraged the netroots buttfreaks. They're literally a mob.

Million-Dollar View? Try $90 Million

This is something else, at the New York Times, "Rising Tower Emerges as a Billionaires' Haven'":

One57, a 1,004-foot tower under construction in Midtown Manhattan, will soon hold the title of New York’s tallest building with residences. But without fanfare from its ultraprivate future residents, it is cementing a new title: the global billionaires’ club.

The buyers of the nine full-floor apartments near the top that have sold so far — among them two duplexes under contract for more than $90 million each — are all billionaires, Gary Barnett, the president of the Extell Development Company, the building’s developer, said this week. The other seven apartments ranged in price from $45 million to $50 million.

The billionaires’ club includes several Americans, at least two buyers from China, a Canadian, a Nigerian and a Briton, according to Mr. Barnett and brokers who have sold apartments in the building, at 157 West 57th Street. Mr. Barnett said that at least a few buyers were “significant Forbes billionaires.”

Since late last year, the “trophy” end of New York’s real estate market has been recording eye-popping sales that seem to have little basis in reality. The signed contract for the nearly-11,000-square-foot duplex on the 89th and 90th floors of One57 that sold for about $95 million topped the record sale in March of a penthouse at 15 Central Park West to a Russian billionaire’s daughter for $88 million. In June, Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino magnate, paid $70 million for a duplex penthouse apartment above the Ritz-Carlton.

Individual sales aside, it is the sheer concentration of wealth in One57, a $1.5 billion development, that is raising the eyebrows of some longtime market watchers.

More at that top link.

Plus, "Two Billionaire Buyers Revealed at One57."

Iran Says Israel 'Threatening' U.S. With Allegations of Iranian Nuclear Weapons

At the Washington Post:

NEW YORK — Israel is bullying the United States over the alleged threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, using the prospect of an Israeli military attack on Iran to force the hand of its much larger ally, Iran’s president said Monday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the idea that Israel might attack on its own, over the objections of the United States, and said Israel is an inconsequential interloper with no rightful place in the Middle East.

“I look at it from the outside, and I see that a few occupying Zionists are threatening the government of the United States,” Ahmadinejad said during an interview with American editors and reporters.

“Is it the Zionists who must tell the United States government what to do, such as form a red line on Iran’s nuclear issues, and the United States government must make such vital decisions under the influence of the Zionists?” Ahmadinejad said, using the Iranian regime’s term for Israel. He spoke through an interpreter.

Americans should be insulted if their government takes marching orders from Israel, Ahmadinejad added.

The two-term Iranian leader spoke on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The gathering this year is colored by the politics of the U.S. presidential election and by the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran.

The Obama administration is chafing under increasingly direct pressure from Israel to declare “red lines” in Iran’s nuclear development that would trigger a U.S. attack. President Obama, who is scheduled to address the United Nations on Tuesday, has said he would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb. He has threatened a military strike if there is no other option to prevent Iran from getting a bomb, but he has not publicly set a deadline for diplomacy to run its course.

Also at Weasel Zippers, "Ahmadinejad: Zionists Control The U.S. Government…"

More at CSM, "Iran's Ahmadinejad says that Israel will be 'eliminated'."

Who Knows?

She's a vile woman.

I'm surprised she's even competitive, she's such a liar.

At Legal Insurrection, "Scott Brown launches first ad on Elizabeth Warren Cherokee claim."

The Blasphemous Michael Coren

At Blazing Cat Fur.

Pamela Geller's Anti-Jihad Ads Go Up in New York's Subways

At National Post, "Support Israel against 'the savage': Blogger's controversial anti-jihad ads hit NYC subways."

And at the clip, I guess AP couldn't find anyone who thought that Muslim beheadings of innocent civilians is savagery. The first women interviewed nails it, however. You have the right to free speech, even if some folks find that speech offensive.

Christina Hendricks Rocks Post-Emmys Governors Ball

Robert Stacy McCain has long pumped up Christina Hendricks as the ultimate Rule 5 babe. I just haven't posted on her that much. She sure is lovely.

See London's Daily Mail, "That's how you get over a loss: Christina Hendricks lets her hair down at Governors Ball after Mad Men Emmys snub."

'F-ck Off' and 'Have a Nice Life'

Now this is interesting, at BuzzFeed, "Hillary Clinton Aide Tells Reporter to “F**k Off” And “Have a Nice Life”."

It turns out Hillary Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines got a bit bothered by the press inquiries. Ann Althouse has an outstanding post on this, at Instapundit, "DON’T GET DISTRACTED BY FACT THAT A STATE DEPT. SPOKESMAN SAID “F*ck Off” and “Have a good life” to that BuzzFeed reporter..."

Follow that link. It's good.

The World Needs American Strength, Not Apologies

Via Bob Belvedere:

Ex-Pittsburgh Pirates Owner Kevin McClatchy Comes Out

It's hard out there for a sexual deviant.

See Towleroad, "Kevin McClatchy, Newspaper Scion And Former Pittsburgh Pirates Owner, Comes Out."

Girl Gets Swats in Texas by Male Vice Principal

The parents signed a release, but I guess they never expected a male administrator to administer the spanking.

At London's Daily Mail, "Taylor Santos Spanking: Mother's fury as Texas schoolgirl left 'bruised and blistered' after male vice principal SPANKED her for cheating."

Everything's so damned politically correct.

Boy, that would be something if we had corporal punishment at my school. We don't do that in college, of course, but I got swats when I was in 7th grade. It's not something you forget very quickly, and I'd say it's an effective form of discipline. Society's all wimped out nowadays. It's ridiculous.

Deadly Attack in Libya Was Major Blow to C.I.A. Efforts

A front-page report at today's New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans has dealt the Central Intelligence Agency a major setback in its intelligence-gathering efforts at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.

Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault on the American mission and a nearby annex were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of armed militant groups in and around the city.

“It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss,” said one American official who has served in Libya and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the F.B.I. is still investigating the attack. “We got our eyes poked out.”

Continue reading.

On the Red Carpet at the Emmys

Hey, London's Daily Mail's got your epic photo roundup from last night's show.

Smokin' hotties.

See: "Emmys 2012: Blue belles! Sofia Vergara, Heidi Klum and Nicole Kidman lead the glamour parade at Emmy Awards."

Obama Blows Off Israel Concerns Over Iranian Nukes as Just Some 'Noise That's Out There'

More from O's f-ked up interview last night on "60 Minutes."

Jennifer Rubin reports, "Obama’s ‘60 Minutes’ wipeout." And from Ed Morrissey, "Obama: Israel’s concerns on Iran “noise” I’m going to block out." (At Memeorandum.)

First Lady Michelle Obama Speaks to Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Dinner

I would have puked all over the guests.

At Twitchy, "Disgraceful: Michelle Obama trots out race card, says ‘Voting rights is movement of our era’."

And listen at the clip. Talk about "back in chains." You'd think blacks were never unshackled in the first place. Something else. Scroll forward to about 15:00 minutes for the "movement of our era" comments. For the first time in my adult life...

Damian Lewis Shocks Emmy Awards With Dramatic Win for Showtime Drama 'Homeland'

At the Los Angeles Times, "Big winners: 'Game Change,' 'Homeland,' 'Modern Family'."

Lots of coverage over there, so surf around a bit for additional reporting.

Obama Dismisses His Administration's Historic Middle East Meltdown as Just 'Bumps in the Road'

Is this hubris? Or he's just completely aloof?

I never cease to be amazed at this president. We're in the midst of one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in recent decades and it's just a "bump in the road" to this man. Unbelievable. Or not. The nonchalance in the face of such an enormous clusterf-k is completely par for the course. What an epic presidential asshole.

See Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard, "Obama on Recent Middle East Violence: 'Bumps in the Road'" (via Memeorandum).

"Bumps in the road." Boy, callousness comes easy to "The One."

Ann Coulter on ABC's 'This Week': 'Democrats Dropping Blacks and Moving On to Hispanics'

See: "Ann Coulter: Democrats ‘Dropping the Blacks and Moving on to the Hispanics’."

Here's the Dior 'J'Adore' Clip From Last Night's Emmy Awards, Featuring Charlize Theron

This is the full 90-second film.

I didn't see much of the awards but still caught the ad running two times during the broadcast. A striking clip.

Obama's Failed Exit From Iraq

From Michael Gordon, at the New York Times, "In U.S. Exit From Iraq, Failed Efforts and Challenges" (at Memeorandum):

The request was an unusual one, and President Obama himself made the confidential phone call to Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president.

Marshaling his best skills at persuasion, Mr. Obama asked Mr. Talabani, a consummate political survivor, to give up his post. It was Nov. 4, 2010, and the plan was for Ayad Allawi to take Mr. Talabani’s place.

With Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite and the leader of a bloc with broad Sunni support, the Obama administration calculated, Iraq would have a more inclusive government and would check the worrisome drift toward authoritarianism under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

But Mr. Obama did not make the sale.

“They were afraid what would happen if the different groups of Iraq did not reach an agreement,” recalled Mr. Talabani, who turned down the request.

Mr. Obama has pointed to the American troop withdrawal last year as proof that he has fulfilled his promise to end the Iraq war. Winding down a conflict, however, entails far more than extracting troops.

In the case of Iraq, the American goal has been to leave a stable and representative government, avoid a power vacuum that neighboring states and terrorists could exploit and maintain sufficient influence so that Iraq would be a partner or, at a minimum, not an opponent in the Middle East.

But the Obama administration has fallen frustratingly short of some of those objectives.

The attempt by Mr. Obama and his senior aides to fashion an extraordinary power-sharing arrangement between Mr. Maliki and Mr. Allawi never materialized. Neither did an agreement that would have kept a small American force in Iraq to train the Iraqi military and patrol the country’s skies. A plan to use American civilians to train the Iraqi police has been severely cut back. The result is an Iraq that is less stable domestically and less reliable internationally than the United States had envisioned.

The story of these efforts has received little attention in a nation weary of the conflict in Iraq, and administration officials have rarely talked about them. This account is based on interviews with many of the principals, in Washington and Baghdad.

Continue reading.

And check JustOneMinute as well.

Yet another foreign policy disaster from President Clusterf-k. Will Americans even care? Probably not, if expert opinion on voter preferences is any clue. But as I argued previously, this year foreign policy is taking on an outsized importance, and history will judge this administration's failures.

I'll have more later...

Outrage After CNN Uses Journal of Ambassador Christopher Stevens as News Source

Anderson Cooper's initial mention of Ambassador Stevens' worries about al Qaeda can be seen at the link.

Some of the source material for that reporting came from the ambassador's personal journal, and there's a backlash, at the Wall Street Journal, "Family Protests CNN's Use of Slain Envoy's Journal." (Via Lonely Conservative and Memeorandum.)

But see Robert Stacy McCain, "Classic: State Department Attacks CNN for Reporting Inconvenient Facts on Libya." Read it all at the link. Robert defends CNN's reporting, as the information in the journal held "worldwide significance."

Check all the reporting at Memeorandum.

Bill Clinton: Romney's Money Advantage Could Swing Election

Maybe old Bill's trying to dampen O's momentum. You know, helping Romney helps Hillary, who might run in 2016.

Putting that aside, perhaps a Romney advertising blitz in the battleground states could tilt the scales come November. If we give credence to the conservative attacks on the polls as biased towards the Dems, then then a GOP money advantage could be decisive.

In any case, FWIW, at the Los Angeles Times, "Clinton: GOP money advantage could still swing the election":

Notice the added point about how the GOP could win if its so-called "voter suppression" efforts are successful. This later point is a big meme on the left. Elizabeth Drew draws out the full conspiracy theory at the New York Review, "Voting Wrongs" (via Memeorandum). And be sure to scroll down to the comments for a real hoot: "IT'S THE END OF DEMOCRACY, GAWD!!!"

Fox News' Chris Wallace Hammers Obama Advisor Robert Gibbs on Administration's Libya Lies (VIDEO)

If we get some media coverage with backbone over the next week or so, the administration's Libya debacle could have an impact on the presidential horse race. The White House lied on Libya. The more information that comes out the worse the administration's cover up appears.

Watch it. These people are stooges.

Newt Gingrich: Romney's Gotta Be Aggressive

Bryan Jacoutot flags this Newt Gingrich interview on CNN, "Newt offers Romney some good advice."

Mitt Romney Can Win

It seems weird for folks to have to say it, but Mitt can still win this.

Mort Zuckerman weighs in, at U.S. News, "Romney Can Still Overcome Obama's Dishonest, Divisive Campaign" (via Memeorandum):

The problem for Mitt Romney right now is that he has put his entire candidacy at risk to the point where he may not even qualify for the dismissive equation of Barack Obama that Marco Rubio formulated for the Republican faithful: "Our problem is not that he's a bad person. Our problem is that he's a bad president." Is Romney also "not a bad person, just a bad candidate"? With his "47 percent" remarks at a Republican fundraiser in May, he has given his opponent evidence to initiate a new line of attack.

Voters can forgive a candidate who stumbles in the heat of an election, trapped by "gotcha" questions from journalists, being quoted out of context in cunning TV attack commercials, and in the Twitter age, failing to appreciate that nothing that is said is secret anymore. We all know the game, and Romney has demonstrated that he is not perfect at this game.

The same can be said of President Obama. As a candidate, he ran a brilliantly smooth and targeted campaign four years ago, but even he misspoke, as they say, in what he thought was a private meeting of San Francisco liberals. When the polls suggested he wasn't appealing to rural voters, his response was to blame them for not seeing how different he was from the likes of Bill Clinton and George Bush, who had let them down. "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," he said. "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration."

This week, Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, dismissed the condescension as something from the mythic past, not to be compared to the furor over Romney's "47 percent" remark. Yet even now, fully armored and protected by four years of 24/7 press scrutiny and an army of verbal bodyguards, the president stumbles. "You didn't build that" still rankles the millions of taxpayers who have concluded that in making their way they've not had much help from the government and a lot of hindrance.

The trouble with Romney—and for Romney—is that he has etched an unappealing sketch of himself. For independent voters, he made too many flip-flops in policy to appease the right. Indeed, he had an uncanny knack for offering an easy target for his opposition: "I like being able to fire people," "I'm also unemployed," "I'm not concerned about the very poor," and "Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs." He seems to be living in another world, referring to middle income as being in the range of "$200,000 to $250,000," when the median income is more like $50,000. By the way, after four years of Obama's economic stewardship, that figure represents a dramatic decline of 10 percent and, in fact, is a strong point to Romney's case against the administration.

Such careless remarks have made it easy for the Obama campaign to get away with a program that pits "the millionaires and billionaires" against the people. It is a dishonest, divisive campaign. It's discouraging of enterprise. It does the opposite of uniting the country to deal with the current economic crisis.

Read it all at the link.

Romney still has a chance. It's going to take some focus and adjustments, but he still has a chance.

The Left vs. the Liberals

From Sean Wilentz, at the New York Review:

Michael Kazin’s new book about American leftists and their impact on the nation over the last two centuries presupposes, as its subtitle suggests, that this impact has been enormous. But Kazin is a judicious scholar without bluster, a professor of history at Georgetown, and coeditor of Dissent, and his assessments are carefully measured. Kazin concedes that radical leftists have often been out of touch with prevailing values, including those of the people they wish to liberate. He concludes that American radicals have done more to change what he calls the nation’s “moral culture” than to change its politics.

And yet, even as Kazin tries to avoid romanticizing the left, his book leaves unchallenged some conventional leftist conceptions about American politics and how change happens. These conventions begin with a presumption about who controls American political life, what C. Wright Mills called the “power elite,” an interlocking directorate of wealth and bureaucracy at the top. Kazin refers to this directorate interchangeably as the “establishment” or the “governing elite.” Unless challenged by radicals, this elite, in his view, is slow to right social wrongs; but without the support of the elite’s more enlightened elements, the radicals remain in the political wilderness.

Occasionally—as with the abolition of slavery, the rise of the New Deal, and the victories of the civil rights movement—momentous changes supported by radicals have indeed come to pass. Yet Kazin argues that the liberal components of the governing elite have supported major reforms strictly in order to advance purposes of their own. Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans, he writes, embraced emancipation only halfway through the Civil War, when it became clear that doing so “could speed victory for the North” and save the Union, their true goal. Franklin D. Roosevelt endorsed labor’s rights only when he needed to court labor’s votes.

Even when they are successful, Kazin writes, the radicals—“decidedly junior partners in a coalition driven by establishment reformers”—end up shoved aside as the liberals enact their more limited programs and take all of the credit. Prophets without honor, the leftists return to the margins where they and later radicals dream new and bigger dreams until another social movement jars the establishment.

Some radical historians—most famously the late Howard Zinn—have described this pattern as a chronicle of thoroughgoing oppression. In their view, the reforms initiated by radicals have practically always turned into swindles, orchestrated by clever rulers to preserve and even reinforce their power. Kazin, who also despairs about the current state of the left, has a more positive view of liberal reformers and their reforms: the Emancipation Proclamation and the Voting Rights Act, he insists, were important political advances and not establishment ruses. But a basic pattern still holds for Kazin as it does for Zinn: radicals challenge the privileged; liberals co-opt them, claiming the glory. In effect liberals are the enemies of fundamental political change.

Most of American Dreamers consists of crisp and useful summaries of nearly four decades’ worth of historical research about American radicals and radical movements, including Kazin’s own work on the amorphous populist strain in American politics. For Kazin, the left consists of anyone who has sought to achieve, in his words, “a radically egalitarian transformation of society.” The definition embraces an enormous array of spokesmen and causes, and Kazin’s account runs from the abolitionists and workingmen radicals of the Jacksonian era through a succession of socialists, women’s suffragists, Greenwich Village bohemians, and civil rights protesters, down to today’s left-wing professoriat.

There's a lot more at the link.

If the left consists of folks looking for "a radical egalitarian transformation of society," one might think Barack Obama would fit the bill. But as the essay points out, Kazin treats Obama as a mainstream centrist Democrat.

That will be an interesting question in the years and decades ahead, the degree of Obama's left-wing radicalism. But read the whole thing. According to Wilentz's thesis, traditional anti-Communist social democrats have contributed much more toward that radical transformation that Kazin hopes to achieve than he's able to recognize. And for historians the key will be to sort out exactly what kind of Democrat this president is. He's not a neo-liberal in the Bill Clinton mold, and indeed, in ideological pedigree Obama's way more radical than President Lyndon Johnson ever was, even if he fails in achieving as lasting change as the great Texas Democrat did. But we could have four more years of this president, and as a lame duck he could tear off the mask and govern from the full-throated ideological radicalism that his upbringing and pedigree indicate. He promised a radical transformation, and he's off to a damn good start, to the detriment of liberty and traditional decency of the American political system.

President Obama Won't Explain Why Libya Consulate Wasn't Better Protected

President Clusterf-k, via Buzzfeed:

The Left is All About Hate

From Ron Radosh, "Why There Cannot Be a Decent Left: An Answer to Richard Landes":

Last week, I wrote a column challenging Professor Richard Landes of Boston University to respond to the critique I wrote of his own arguments against Judith Butler. In that article, I argued that well-meaning men of the Left like Prof. Landes should give up trying to tell people like Butler that the reasons for their hostility to Israel contradict the humanist values of the Left. I argued that it is a fool’s errand trying to save the Left from itself; that in today’s world, what defines being on the Left are precisely the kind of positions Landes and others disdain....

I discussed Landes’ argument with my friend David Horowitz, and he e-mailed me a thoughtful response with which I mainly concur. Horowitz writes:

The distinction he makes between a demotic Left and a revolutionary Left is fairy dust. Yes there have been and still are a handful of decent but impotent people on the Left whose political weight is non-existent. Whatever happened to the Euston Manifesto? What are the leftwing publications, organizations, recognized spokesmen who are defending Jews and Christians and even gays and women against the Islamo-Nazis? Were the same even calling them Nazis, which is what they are (and yes, the Nazis themselves were leftists)?

There is a fundamental snobbery and arrogance evident in the postures of the so-called demotic mini-Left. The leftists actually have a monopoly on all the values that we associate with human decency, equality, liberty, etc. But these values were actually instituted and made into a global force by conservatives — American conservatives who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and created a political system to make those values real. Judith Butler doesn’t act out of good intentions. She acts out of the same emotion that motivates the Left generally, which is hate. Henry James described them all in describing the feminist heroine of his novel The Bostonians: “It was the usual things of life that filled her with silent rage, which was natural enough, inasmuch as to her vision almost everything that was usual was iniquitous. … The most secret, the most sacred hope of her nature was that she might some day … be a martyr and die for something.” Or as Marx — who is the inspiration for all leftists — put it: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” That is the true voice of leftism. What the demotic mini-Left is about is sentimentality.andes and others disdain.

Continue reading.

Pat Condell: We Don't Give a Damn About Your Islamic Outrage

Via Linkmaster Smith:

PREVIOUSLY: "Egypt's Mohamed Morsi Dictates U.S. Foreign Policy to the Obama White House."

Egypt's Mohamed Morsi Dictates U.S. Foreign Policy to the Obama White House

They say that voters don't vote foreign policy. In presidential elections pocketbook issues dominate, and especially in a year like this. And so far, it's not clear that the Republicans have won over the electorate on the jobs crisis (so we might be stuck with another four years of this Obama-Democrat calamity). But there's a lot more on our collective plate this year, and that's the standing of the United States as the continued leader of the free world. The evidence on the Libya attack is so overwhelming now that the White House can no longer cover it up. And we know that the Obama administration's foreign policy toward the Arab world has failed, our relations with and standing in the Muslim world has literally exploded in great balls of fire before our eyes. And the kick in the teeth is still to come when Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi meeets with President Obama to lay down the law on how the United States is to deal with the Middle East. I hope Obama's been practicing his bow, because he's going to be bending low before the Muslim Brotherhood chief, deeper than any head of state to which he's kowtowed thus far. Americans need to take a good hard look at what's going down and then ask themselves if 2012 isn't one of those elections in which history shall be the final judge. Obama promised a fundamental transformation in 2008. He's kept his word and continues to deliver the goods, bringing down Uncle Sam every step of the way.

At the New York Times, "Egypt’s New Leader Spells Out Terms for U.S.-Arab Ties":

CAIRO — On the eve of his first trip to the United States as Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi said the United States needed to fundamentally change its approach to the Arab world, showing greater respect for its values and helping build a Palestinian state, if it hoped to overcome decades of pent-up anger.

A former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mr. Morsi sought in a 90-minute interview with The New York Times to introduce himself to the American public and to revise the terms of relations between his country and the United States after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, an autocratic but reliable ally.

He said it was up to Washington to repair relations with the Arab world and to revitalize the alliance with Egypt, long a cornerstone of regional stability.

If Washington is asking Egypt to honor its treaty with Israel, he said, Washington should also live up to its own Camp David commitment to Palestinian self-rule. He said the United States must respect the Arab world’s history and culture, even when that conflicts with Western values.

And he dismissed criticism from the White House that he did not move fast enough to condemn protesters who recently climbed over the United States Embassy wall and burned the American flag in anger over a video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad.

“We took our time” in responding to avoid an explosive backlash, he said, but then dealt “decisively” with the small, violent element among the demonstrators.

“We can never condone this kind of violence, but we need to deal with the situation wisely,” he said, noting that the embassy employees were never in danger.

Mr. Morsi, who will travel to New York on Sunday for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, arrives at a delicate moment. He faces political pressure at home to prove his independence, but demands from the West for reassurance that Egypt under Islamist rule will remain a stable partner.

Mr. Morsi, 61, whose office was still adorned with nautical paintings that Mr. Mubarak left behind, said the United States should not expect Egypt to live by its rules.

“If you want to judge the performance of the Egyptian people by the standards of German or Chinese or American culture, then there is no room for judgment,” he said. “When the Egyptians decide something, probably it is not appropriate for the U.S. When the Americans decide something, this, of course, is not appropriate for Egypt.”

He suggested that Egypt would not be hostile to the West, but would not be as compliant as Mr. Mubarak either.

“Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region,” he said, by backing dictatorial governments over popular opposition and supporting Israel over the Palestinians.

He initially sought to meet with President Obama at the White House during his visit this week, but he received a cool reception, aides to both presidents said. Mindful of the complicated election-year politics of a visit with Egypt’s Islamist leader, Mr. Morsi dropped his request.

Well, yeah. Bowing, in the White House, before the leader of the Arab terrorist world might not have gone over too well with the American public. That's something that even the Obama-enabling media wouldn't be able to conceal.

Things are not right in the world. There has never been as much groveling in our foreign policy, and now a two-bit terrorist lackey is dictating America's foreign policy on the Middle East. It's a disgrace of epic proportions, the mother of all clusterf-ks. May Americans take notice, for the survival of the republic is in their hands.

More at Big Government, "Obama to Condemn Christian Filmmaker Before United Nations" (via Memeorandum).

PREVIOUSLY: "David Horowitz on Libya Attack: 'One of the Most Disgraceful Moments in the History of the American Presidency...'"

RELATED: From the Western Center for Journalism, "Egypt’s New President Keeps Useful Idiot Obama On Short Muslim Brotherhood Leash."

IMAGE CREDIT: The Looking Spoon.

Unmasking Obama — Washington Examiner, 'The Obama You Don't Know'

I hope this gets wide coverage, "The Obama you don't know."

And Doug Ross has a summary, "Unmasking Obama: A Special Report." Also, Theo Spark has the Fox News video, "Fox News Reports Barry Soetoro's Manufactured Past."

Conservative partisans will know most of the story, as will progressive fever swamp nihilists, who've working diligently to obfuscate and suppress the truth. It was a the biggest scam and sham on this country history when the African Marxist interloper was first elected. But we know who Obama is now. If Americans elect this man again they deserve the descent to decline that he's bequeathing the country.

Say your prayers. And keep fighting against this extreme leftist abomination.