Saturday, June 16, 2012

Last Call

The Griftzilla From Wasilla is low on fundage again, so it's time to insult President Obama.

"That cocaine snorting, and what he ate - Fido? Rufus? I think it's funny that the cocktail circuit gives me a hard time for eating elk and moose. Anybody here have a pet moose? There's a difference."

HAHAHA HE ATE DOG BUT I'M THE SAVAGE!  Thank you folks, Sarah will be at the RightOnline Conference all week.

Crying into her Miller Lite.

At this point, she is her own punchline.

Nemesis Is Clearly Off Getting A Mani/Pedi


Of the list of people who are not allowed to complain about President Obama’s “executive overreach” in yesterday’s directive involving undocumented students being allowed to apply to work permits, the absolute top of that list consists of two, maybe three people.  One of them is former Dubya legal “ace” John “Of Course We Can Waterboard” Yoo, who promptly calls down the wrath of Nemesis herself upon his doomed soul with this observation over at NRO.

President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served. There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

This is pretty much the equivalent of the Mouth of Sauron proclaiming that Gondor is violating Middle Earth’s OSHA laws by having all those dangerous, pointy swords everywhere, and won’t somebody please think of the children.  I’m hoping dark Nemesis has some pretty sturdy Doc Martens, because certain asses are in dire need of having boots inserted in them and rotation will probably be necessary.  Yoo’s own theories on the plenary executive are phenomenally daft, but claiming that the President has the authority to declare unending bloody war on tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan citizens but doesn’t have the authority to direct enforcement procedures of executive branch agencies is so absolutely douchetronic that Yoo probably needs to waterboard himself for a while just to balance the scales of the universe.

And yet, Nemesis is off getting an all-day mani/pedi or something because Yoo continues on without several million Olympian arrows magically appearing in his chest.

Imagine the precedent this claim would create. President Romney could lower tax rates simply by saying he will not use enforcement resources to prosecute anyone who refuses to pay capital-gains tax. He could repeal Obamacare simply by refusing to fine or prosecute anyone who violates it.

The funny part is everyone at NRO who read this sentence said “Shut!  The Front!  Door!   That’s a brilliant idea!  We’ll just refuse to enforce the crap we don’t like!  John Yoo, you’re a genius!”  Because that’s exactly what President Romney would do, simply stop enforcing things.  Hell, it’s what Bush did with Wall Street.  It’s not like the Bush-era Securities and Exchange Commission or the Food and Drug Administration or practically any other government regulatory body in the executive branch actually enforced laws.  They decided their job was not in fact regulation but to help the industries they were supposed to be checks upon get around regulation.  Yoo had no problem with that, or the whole “Hey, Congress Schmongress!” thing with Afghanistan, Iraq, and detainees getting fake drowned and all that jazz either.  Using the executive’s enforcement directives to not deport kids?  That’s worth putting POTUS in the dock, yo.

Yoo’s big finish:

So what we have here is a president who is refusing to carry out federal law simply because he disagrees with Congress’s policy choices. That is an exercise of executive power that even the most stalwart defenders of an energetic executive — not to mention the Framers — cannot support.

How his hands were able to type that sentence without automatically wrapping themselves around his own throat only proves that I need more psionic training.

And then Alberto Gonzales chimes in proving that after getting her nails done, Nemesis is getting sloshed on Caramel Appletinis at Chili's rather than making with the whole justice thing.

“To half through executive order the deportation of some undocumented immigrants looks like a political calculation to win Hispanic votes,” Gonzales told the crowd at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C. Saturday, “and subjects him to criticism that he is violating his oath of office by selectively failing to enforce the law.”

These guys are trolling.  Period.

This Week In Village Idiocy

It was Eleanor Clift, in the Daily Beast, with the candlestick.  She's standing over the beaten corpse of political journalism with a really confused look on her face, too, like she's not quite sure if she was moving her arms to cave in the skull, or the candlestick moved on its own accord.  She stands surrounded by a focus group of independent voters.

Listening to these voters for over two hours, it was clear that their assessment of the economy is not as bleak as one would suppose, given their disaffection from Obama. They generally agree that the economy is improving, but Obama doesn’t get credit for a recovery that, while slow, is moving in the right direction—the core of his message for a second term. A few cited what they called “little things” Obama has done for the economy, like reining in credit-card companies, but no one could cite major accomplishments that would measure up to the expectations aroused by Obama as a candidate who promised to bring about transformative change.
This Denver group was sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and Hart’s findings add to a growing chorus of concern among Democrats not directly aligned with the Obama campaign that the president is not connecting with the voters he needs to win. Asked if he was feeling the heat from his allies in the Obama camp, Hart told The Daily Beast, “They know who I am, and that I’m a straight-shooter, and I’m totally in their corner. Sometimes being in their corner means telling them the truth.”
Whether it’s a failure of policy or of communications is debatable, but the sense of disillusionment with Obama’s performance is real. “He set up expectations that began 46 months ago, and they only grew over time,” says Hart. He singled out Jeffrey, a 31-year-old Web designer and home remodeler, as the voter Obama most needs and might not get. Jeffrey voted for Obama last time.
The whole platform was hope—I don’t feel any more hope today,” he said. Pressed by Hart as to which candidate he was leaning toward, Jeffrey said the tenor of the campaign turned him off, that he felt like he was in the middle of a weird argument between a husband and wife, and all he wanted to do was leave the room. “I don’t even know if I’m going to vote this time,” he said glumly.

And the bolded clues there are for Eleanor's benefit.  There's something that they all have in common, demonstrated most aptly by a woman with a weekly political op-ed column seemingly baffled by why voters apparently know nothing about Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital.  All they know is that OBAMA FAILED THEM and that they don't really know anything about the other guy.

If only there were a group of Americans whose job it was to disseminate information and report on political developments with the intent of having a robust, informed electorate.  Sadly, I can't think of anyone like that and if such a group of "reporters" did exist, Eleanor Clift wouldn't know one from a 26-pound wheel of Gorgonzola cheese.

It's possible she may have cacked one of these "reporters", but the independent voters apparently saw nothing, so they don't feel any particular need to engage right now in the whole political process anyway.

It remains a total mystery as to why, of course.

Oops! Hitchhiker Shot Himself

On Monday, Ray Dolin of West Virginia grabbed national headlines when he claimed that he was hiking on Highway 2 in Montana — gathering stories for a memoir about how nice people are — when a man in a pickup truck pulled over and then shot him in the arm. What a story! Police even arrested a 52-year-old man under suspicion of assault, but he was cleared after a search of his truck turned up zero evidence. Under more interrogation, Dolin admitted to police on Thursday that he made the story up and he actually shot himself in the arm. Whether he lied to cover for his own foolishness or simply to grab attention we still don't know, but we do know that America is slightly less kind when people try to get other people in trouble for fake shootings. Police say the case in still under investigation, though there may be charges for Dolin in the work

Sorry, guys.  I manage to dodge most of these, but it seemed just ironic enough to be true.  I think he'll be plenty sorry that he tried to pull off this stunt.   I also hope the poor man who was arrested wasn't too rattled.  How terrifying that must have been when you're innocent.

Octogenarian Shocked By Police Treatment


St. George Police Chief Anthony L. Britt said that an officer who tased a nude 80-year-old woman was justified  because the woman could have hurt police officers and EMS crews with her metal walking cane which she was swinging at officers.
"We just felt that was the best way to apprehend her and not let her hurt anybody or herself," Britt said on Friday. "There was no other way to get her to come down from where she was at that point."
On May 21, a lieutenant with the St. George Police Department contacted emergency dispatch regarding noises he heard near his home. A police officer responded and said he found a nude elderly woman in front of a home on Gavin Street banging her walking cane on the rail of the steps.
"Officers made contact with her. She was non responsive and quoting scriptures from the Bible," Britt said.
Britt says he and another officer arrived shortly after and attempted to talk to the woman. Some time later, a lieutenant with the police department and EMS crews arrived.
According to Britt, police and EMS personnel attempted to talk to the woman with negative results. Police say they attempted to get the cane away from the woman which almost got officers injured.
"She swung the cane several times at different officers as they were trying to approach her," Britt said. "One of the officers that came from behind almost got hit in the head with the cane. At that point, I just told the officers,'She's in a safe position, just go ahead and tase her so we can prevent anybody from getting hurt.'"
"Almost" getting injured by an old woman who feels threatened is not an excuse to use a taser on an elderly person.  She was clearly confused and unable to make decisions.  However, she deserved compassion and kindness instead of the treatment she received.  I have to say, maybe her assessment of the officers was spot on.

Too Long, Didn't Listen

For months now the Village has pushed the idea that President Obama is in over his head, that he needs more substance, that he needs to lay out his differences with Mitt Romney, that he needs to do more to reach the American people.  In short, he needs to follow the advice of the pundits who know better than he does.  Just yesterday morning Chuck Todd at the crew at MSNBC had this advice:

After he conducted a focus group of swing voters in Colorado, pollster Peter Hart -- the Democratic half of the NBC/WSJ poll -- had this advice for Team Obama in an interview with NBC News: “Our focus groups show that voters see a lot of glamour and glitz from the Obama administration; they're wondering where the vision, where the valor is going to be.” More from Hart: “[Obama] is missing the mark on the middle class. He needs to get down there. It is not just rallies; he needs to be out there feeling what they are feeling, a lot of pain, a lot of hurt, a lot of uncertainty.” And: “[The public] need a sense of a vision, they need a sense of hope, they need to be able to see that it’s not just the old Obama giving them the charisma and the cool. They need to see substance over style.” We know there are many folks in Obamaland who semi-dismiss the criticism coming from Greenberg/Carville. But the ex-Clinton folks apparently are not alone.

And what did the Village make of the President's major speech in Cleveland where he did just that?  We don't know, since apparently the speech was too long and had too much substance for our pundit class to be able to handle.

Prior to President Barack Obama’s marathon 54 minute speech in Ohio today, the Obama campaign sent our several statements promising the speech would be a major address framing the campaign going forward. Despite the hype, the speech was mainly a rehash of themes and ideas from the president’s recent stump speeches and his remarks were widely panned as overly long by the political press corps.

The President was hit from the left, center, and right by the Village for a speech that was "too long", "dull", "boring", a "lecture" and had "nothing new" in its 54 minutes.  NewsBeast's Jonathan Alter was particularly brutal.

"I thought this honestly was one of the least successful speeches I've seen Barack Obama give," Jonathan Alter, the Bloomberg View columnist who is close to the White House, said on MSNBC. He suggested the speech lacked memorable lines and "lost the audience by the end."

Perhaps Obama has only himself to blame. He's dug out of quite a few holes with masterful speeches in the past -- most notably when he was forced to explain the heated rhetoric of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, in April 2008 -- and so now has an extremely high bar to live up to.
But this one probably won't go down in the history books, even if the campaign made clear it considered this a key moment, distributing praise for the speech and the president's approach to the economy from a litany of elected officials across the country.

Remember, this is the same Alter who complained last week that the President needed to have a long and serious talk with the electorate about jobs and the economy.

In an economy headed in the wrong direction, comparison campaigning is necessary but not sufficient. It might not matter much to frustrated voters that we’ve tried the Republican recipe for growth (tax cuts and deregulation) in the 2000s and it failed, or that Romney was 47th out of 50 governors when it came to job creation in his state. The tie -- two failed job creators -- goes to the challenger.

That means Obama must match his focus on the choice with more work on the referendum side -- more affirmative reasons to vote for him. He has begun reminding voters of the American Jobs Act he pushed last fall that would help small business and create a million new jobs, his 2012 State of the Union “Built to Last” long-term investment agenda, and last month’s congressional “To- Do List.” The problem is, they all blur together.

So he does that, and of course now he's too cerebral, too nerdy, too substantive to the point of being lecturing, boring, and dull.  But remember, our "liberal media" is "in the tank for Obama".

My ass it is.

Marketing For Dummies (And We're The Dummies) 101

If you've not dropped by the new (old and new) Angry Black Lady Chronicles yet, do so.  Bon and I will often throw up pieces over there that we don't post here (our better stuff that we'd like to share) and we're both grateful to have the opportunity to get some wider audiences on our stuff.  There's an excellent crew of bloggers over there and it's a solid group effort.

The newest member of the Angry Black Borg is Leo Soderman, a photographer, dad, blogger, and a genuinely neat dude.  He's got some excellent advice on why the Left struggles with message, and why the Right is so good at it.

Marketing.

For example, let’s look at the ACA. Why, when the individual parts of the ACA are supported by the majority, is the ACA still not overwhelmingly supported by the average American? Because they haven’t been shown why it’s good for them. Piss poor job of marketing, frankly. The ACA allows kids to stay on their parents insurance much longer. And that’s where the conversation usually stops, with the assumption that everyone knows this is good. But this is where the conversation needs to start.

Explain why staying on the insurance is good for them. Explain that keeping kids on longer actually reduces healthcare costs because you will pay the same premiums and the risk pool is bigger, with younger adults that usually don’t need care. Explain that it allows their kids to go to school and not have to worry about getting sick. Explain that if they aren’t covered, they likely will not seek insurance, making the pool smaller, and that means more people that use the insurance are in the pool. Which drives rates up. In the end, being able to keep their kids on the insurance means more people covered while helping control costs. That’s more money in their pockets in the long run and better health for themselves and their kids. That’s what it does for them.

And that’s just one small aspect of ACA.

Do read the whole thing...and yes, I'm guilty of that myself.  I assume that the reasoning behind voting for President Obama is self-evident, and while I do explain various minutiae of the many individual reasons, the whole 30,000 foot level question of  "What's in it for me?" doesn't get answered as much as I'd like to.

I'm going to try to address that more as we head into the heart of the election season.

New tag:  But What Does It Do For Me?

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!