Year: 2011

Editorial Peeves: Redundancies

Posted on 60 Comments

by Smitty

Allahpundit is a great blogger, but “Video: Sign the petition to ban job-killing ATM machines” tramples a peeve of mine. If you decode the acronym, you now have ‘automated teller machine machines’. Similarly, the new military ID is a Common Access Card, or CAC. As you might expect, people call it a CAC card. Gaaah! On a related note, please do not ‘reply back’ to email from me. A simple reply is sufficient.
The consideration of all for the content of what they are writing and saying is greatly appreciated.

Virginia State Senate Races

Posted on 1 Comment

by Smitty

This blog would like to tout two State Senate races in Virginia. I’m only a month late mentioning Bryan Rhode, who is running in the 22nd Senate District. I went to school with Bryan’s brother Rob, who is an outstanding American if there ever was.
Closer to the Potomac, Tito ‘the Builder’ Munoz is running in the 36th Senate District. I met Tito while campaigning for Patrick Murray in 2008, and esteem the gentleman highly. Hat tip to just a conservative girl.
Recall, the task of recovering the country from Progressive rot takes effort at all levels of government. Props to Rhode and Munoz for undertaking the effort to run.

Thanks, Rush!

Posted on 51 Comments

Here’s the transcript of Rush Limbaugh’s show today:

Folks, this is from Robert Stacy McCain, the American Spectator blog: “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected within a week to make a decision on whether to enter the 2012 presidential campaign, according to one Republican source. Vendors of campaign services who hope to work for Team Palin…”
I guess “vendors of campaign services” are like pollsters and buttons and signs, T-shirts, that stuff. They’ve “been told that Palin, the 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate, will decide soon one way or another on mounting a 2012 campaign.” . . .

Rush then began to discuss reaction to a Rasmussen poll (45% of GOP Primary Voters Say It’s Bad for Party If Palin Enters Presidential Race) before returning to the topic:

By the way, Palin has tweeted in response to this, knocking down this story that she’s gonna make up her mind next week. The tweet says, “Really? Hmm, guess they forgot to inform me what I’m ‘expected to do’ next week.” This is in response to the American Spectator blog that I just read from which says that she’s expected within a week to make a decision on whether to run.

One of the difficult things about reporting on Sarah Palin is that only Sarah Palin can speak for Sarah Palin, and she only talks to Fox News. So if you’re a reporter who doesn’t work for Fox News, you have to get what you can get where you can get it. Before I filed that brief report at the Spectator this morning, I made a call to try to confirm it with Palin’s people. But I guess if you don’t work for Fox News, they don’t take your call.

So damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You either (a) work for Fox News or (b) aren’t allowed to report on Sarah Palin. And while I’m not complaining, I can certainly understand why this predicament irritates the 99% of political reporters who don’t work for Fox News.

Ah, Krauthammer

Posted on 35 Comments

by Smitty (via NRO)

From CK on Fox:

I am surprised that so many Republicans are jumping on the War Powers Resolution. They will regret it, because if you have a Republican in office, you’re going to have isolationist Democrats who are going to try to restrain his exercise of his powers… and the Republicans aren’t going to like it. I would not truck in the War Powers Resolution.

I also think that the administration’s defense of what it’s doing is extremely weak and misguided. Obama’s answer essentially is, ‘Well, the resolution is out there, but it’s not relevant because this isn’t really a war,’ which is absurd and insulting. …

What he should say is, “I, like every other of my predecessors, I do not recognize the legality of this act and its authority over the presidency.’ And that’s where he should make his stand. …

Does Charles grasp that many conservatives are unhappy with the bi-partisan penchant for saber rattling? If socialism is the opiate of bureaucracy, then military adventurism is the alcohol of the national greatness set. BHO may be giving the military-industrial complex its bottle, but a look at the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll indicates the usual suspects may be having problems holding it down.
After three years of anything but sobriety or truth, there seems little hope of the administration dealing with, well, reality.
The question then moves to whether the surreality will make it across the impeachment threshhold. I doubt that. The administration will more or less seize up, but the impeachment will be the 2012 election itself. The country will stagger forward in a political stupor for another 17 months until the next inauguration, I reckon.

‘Was That a Denial, Governor?’

Posted on 58 Comments

MINNEAPOLIS
“We are not having this phone conversation.” The phone call woke me up from a well-deserved nap here at the Hilton, site of the Right Online conference. Before I’d laid down for my nap, I’d posted a brief item at The American Spectator blog:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected within a week to make a decision on whether to enter the 2012 presidential campaign, according to one Republican source.
Vendors of campaign services who hope to work for Team Palin have been told that Palin, the 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate, will decide soon one way or another on mounting a 2012 campaign.

That’s what my source said. And here’s what Sarah Palin said:

To which I replied:

See what I’m saying? My source hears something, my source tells me, and I report it: a mere two sentences. Next thing you know, the governor herself is Tweeting a statement — which, I repeat, does not look exactly like a denial — and, I am told, both my post and Palin’s response are discussed on the radio by Rush Limbaugh. And then my nap gets interrupted by a phone call that’s so off-the-record I’m not even supposed to say I got a phone call.

Sigh. My apologies to all those reporters at the NYT, the WaPo and other mainstream media who are trying to chase down this story. Good luck. I’m going to try to finish my nap now.

UPDATE: Nap delayed again, because there’s a Memeorandum thread now, and I see that CNN’s Alison Harding takes Palin’s Tweet as a denial. But is it?

Did the governor say, “No, I’m not planning to make a decision next week”? Or, better yet, did she deny that her team have informed interested parties to expect a decision in that time frame?

Jim Geraghty at NRO has some helpful thoughts on exactly how long Palin could wait, noting that “the ranks of the unaffiliated staffers and volunteers grows thinner week by week.”

Geraghty also spots the key phrase in my AmSpec report: “vendors of campaign services who hope to work for Team Palin.” These are businesses. They can’t operate on the basis of maybe getting contracts from a potential campaign that may or may not happen. So it would obviously be in their interest to ask, “How soon will we know? When will a decision be made?”

BTW, I’ve talked to my original source twice since this story broke. And I’m standing by the story.

UPDATE II: Allahpundit also examines the timetable of a Palin campaign rollout (or not). But Allahpundit talks about an “announcement” and my source didn’t say anything about an announcement. No, my source was talking about a decision. An announcement and a decision are two different things.

UPDATE III: It is interesting to see some idiots try to depict me as being anti-Palin. Just FYI:

So, memo to Palin fans: Just because I’m a reporter doesn’t mean I’m the enemy.

UPDATE IV: Thanks, Rush!


Oh Come On, Stacy!

Posted on 2 Comments

by Smitty

I’m reading this otherwise excellent piece at AmSpec, and can’t buy the conclusion at all. Do you need a Clue, man? “Weiner, on the Spitzer show, with the drivel”.
These are Progressives. This is who they are; this is what they do.
Why, you ask? Compensating for not being Jimmie Bise, that’s why.

Update: Perhaps something in print media, where perhaps he can prick a hole in the stiff front erected by those pornographers, as Carlin had it.

VIDEO: Breitbart Talks WeinerGate

Posted on 27 Comments

MINNEAPOLIS
Everybody I saw downstairs this morning at the Right Online conference kept telling me, “You look rough.” As well I should.

My flight out of Dulles yesterday was delayed more than an hour on departure. By the time I arrived, checked into the Hilton and had dinner — bangers and mash at a British-style pub downtown — I was running desperately late on deadline for my column at The American Spectator:

Three weeks ago, Anthony Weiner was a rising star in the Democratic Party, an influential spokesman for the progressive movement and, quite possibly, the next mayor of New York City.
Today, Weiner is a despised figure so thoroughly disgraced, even in the eyes of the most partisan Democrats, that he is unlikely to have any future in politics. In the process of stringing out his bizarre scandal for nearly three weeks — the first 10 days of which were spent telling one implausible lie after another — Weiner damaged himself and his party in a way that would not have happened had he resigned much sooner. By the time Weiner gave his resignation speech Thursday in New York, he was such a pariah that even his political mentor, Sen. Charles Schumer, would not even speak publicly in his defense, instead issuing a brief statement wishing Weiner well. . . .

Please read the whole thing. After I hit deadline, I managed to grab Andrew Breitbart in the hotel lobby for this 4-minute interview about his role in breaking the WeinerGate scandal:

You’ll notice Breitbart had a bottle of red wine handy, and kept waving the cork when he was gesturing. This interview took place at about 2 a.m., after the lobby bar had closed.