The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

When David Axelrod Gets Worried, He Always Sends Me E-Mails

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 9 Comments

And every time he sends me an e-mail, he asks for money:

Robert —
I first met Barack Obama in 1992.
Back before he was a state senator, a candidate, the President of the United States, a husband or a father, he was a 30-year-old guy running voter registration drives in Chicago. He made an impression on me — and when, in 2007, he decided to run for president, I signed up without hesitation.
I thought, if I could help Barack Obama get to the White House, I would have accomplished something great in my life.
It’s been a long and amazing journey, and our small team of a few became a movement of millions. Now, we’re in the final days of his last campaign, fighting to keep Barack Obama in the White House — and there’s not much time left to step up. We’re planning his last Election Night — and he wants you to be there.
Be a part of this. Donate $5 or whatever you can today, and you’ll be automatically entered to meet President Obama and be right up front at his Election Night speech.
I don’t know how this is going to end. But no matter what, I know each of us will have given this campaign everything we’ve got.
I hope you can be there on the big night.
Flight and hotel are covered for you and a guest — donate $5 or whatever you can today, and you’ll be automatically entered:
https://donate.barackobama.com/Election-Night
Thanks for everything. Let’s win this.
Sincerely,
David

If you ever signed up for their campaign’s e-mail updates,  you’re getting a steady bombardment of fear-mongering and worry-warting in your inbox these days. It’s almost as if Axelrod and Obama and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and all the other Democrats desperately begging for campaign cash don’t really believe Nate Silver’s 73.1% prediction.

Maybe they’re worried about The Racist Hurricane.

Maybe they’re worried about turnout in Virginia.

Maybe they’re worried about how moms in Iowa, Ohio, Colorado and other swing states will react to their sick new “do it with Obama” ad.

And, yeah, maybe that Benghazi mess worries them.

 

 

Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012

Gang Rape, Video Orgy, Teen Suicide

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 15 Comments

Dan Riehl reports that four teenagers have been charged with gang-raping a University of Massachusetts student in her dormitory two weeks ago. Meanwhile, the New York Post reports on a 15-year-old girl who killed herself after a group-sex incident:

The Staten Island high-school girl who leapt in front of a train and killed herself had been humiliated by classmates after a video of her in an orgy with four football players went viral, sources said.
The NYPD is now investigating the death of Felicia Garcia, 15, a student at Tottenville HS. Detectives questioned school administrators yesterday and grilled the football players, who said the sex was consensual, sources said.
Garcia had watched Tottenville beat rival Port Richmond HS 16-8 in a Friday-night football game and attended a wild after-party.
There she had sex with the players, and when rumors of the tryst spread, she also told a friend the sex was consensual, sources said.
By Monday, the video was being shared among classmates. Some ridiculed Garcia, and others came on to her, friends said.
“This poor girl was called a slut. She was teased on Facebook,” a classmate, Victoria, said yesterday. . . .
Garcia and other students crowded on the Staten Island Railway station in Huguenot to go home. The taunts followed her there, said witness Rene Oviedo, 15.
“She was just standing by the edge of the platform with tears in her eyes,” she said.
Another witness, Sara Brager, 16, a junior, said: “The last words Felicia said were, ‘Finally, it’s here.’ I guess she meant the train. She dropped her bag, and she just fell back onto the tracks.”

Maybe the sex-education quiz should include this question: Is it considered “safe sex” if a girl jumps in front of a train afterwards? And now, for your final gross-out of the day:

Winnifred’s mother, Jenny Bonjean, is a feminist who says she’s trying to raise an uninhibited, empowered girl.

Read the whole thing. Millstone, neck, some assembly required.

Category: Crime, Culture, Sex

Obama ‘Grinding It Out’ in Ohio

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 19 Comments

“Team Obama knows the campaign doesn’t have the magic it had in 2008. Crowds are enthusiastic, but not over-the-top enthusiastic. Obama’s strategy is to make up the excitement gap by just grinding it out, doing the organizational work of getting the people most likely to support the president — blacks, Latinos, women, the young — to vote early. By doing so, he hopes to build up a sufficient bank of votes to prevail over Romney on November 6. It’s the no-magic campaign.”
— Byron York, Washington Examiner

The evidently widespread faith that Team Obama can overcome any disadvantage through a superior “ground game” is the final bulwark of Hope, and we’re now 10 days from learning whether this faith will be justified. However, Republicans should not be discouraged by reports of the Democrats’ early-vote advantage.

It seems that many Republican voters are just old-fashioned and believe in voting in person on Election Day. I was in Virginia “Victory Centers” last week and heard the phone-bankers make call after call to folks who would say, yes, they support Romney, but no, they don’t want to vote early. And I remind you again what RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said last month in Ohio, when all the polls were running against Romney:

“We’re going to outspend the DNC 10-to-1 [in Ohio] for the next six weeks… We’re going to crush ‘em on the ground.”

Given the recent report that the DNC is essentially bankrupt, and that the RNC entered October with an 18-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s outfit, Priebus’s promise now seems a lot less like bragging than it did in late September when, according to Quinnipiac, Obama led by 10 points in Ohio. The latest Rasmussen poll has Ohio tied and, looking at the internals of another poll, Ed Morrissey says:

It’s a razor-close race in Ohio, but if Romney has knocked six points off of Obama’s 2008 gender gap and turned an eight-point deficit among independents into an eight-point advantage in a cycle where Democratic enthusiasm won’t come close to matching 2008, I have to think that the magic has already shifted to Romney.

We’ll see. I plan to return to Ohio next week. I’d rattle the tip jar, but with Dan Riehl in the hospital, I urge you to go hit Dan’s tip jar instead. I did.

 


Category: Election 2012, Ohio

Joe Biden: Obama’s Albatross

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 10 Comments

Vulgar comments to the father of a Navy SEAL killed in Benghazi? Yeah, that’s just a start. How about Joe, the Omen of Economic Doom?

Vice President Joe Biden is campaigning in Oshkosh on Friday, a day after one of the largest area employers announced 450 layoffs — the result of expected cuts to the Department of Defense.
Oshkosh Corp. will layoff 450 manufacturing workers in January, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday, saying the Pentagon is expected to purchase few of the company’s military vehicles. The military cut its requested budget for ground vehicles by 32 percent in the 2013 fiscal year.

“Stand up, Chuck! Let ’em see ya! Oh, God love ya, what am I talking about?”

Category: Election 2012, Joe Biden, Wisconsin

VIDEO: Obama Destroyed in RNC Ad

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 8 Comments

This is 1:10, so it’s online only — not a 30-second TV commercial — but it brutally exposes the shallowness of Obama’s campaign:

(Via Erika Johnsen at Hot Air.)

Category: Election 2012, Video

Are You a ‘Nate Silver Truther’?

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 28 Comments

I am, according to some worthless putz named Joshua Holland writing at the left-wing site AlterNet. Holland also:

  • Calls me “a notably dense right-wing blogger”; and
  • Misspells my name (there is no “e” in Stacy).

As to the substance of the dispute, Holland’s article is entitled:

Republicans Desperate to Spin Romney as the
Front-Runner Are Becoming ‘Nate Silver Truthers’

No, Republicans are actually (a) looking at Romney’s lead in numerous polls, (b) looking at Nate Silver’s bizarre transmutation of this data into a 73.1% likelihood of Obama’s re-election, and (c) saying, “What the f–k is Nate talking about?”

As been repeatedly pointed out, when you start digging down into the samples of the polls, there is good reason to believe that Romney’s vote is actually being underestimated. For example, it was big news that ABC/WaPo had Romney leading Obama 50-47. But Ace of Spades points out that the sample is D+4 and Romney leads by 19 points — NINETEEN FREAKING POINTS — among independents.

Let’s consider the possibility — just throwing this out there — that many of the “independents” leaning so decisively toward Romney are a bunch of bitter gun-clingers in Appalachia who don’t really matter in terms of the Crucial Battleground States.

Fine. OK. But excuse me for believing that if Romney has even half that big of a lead (9 or 10 points) among independents in Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Iowa and New Hampshire, we’re gonna be looking at an all-out Republican romp Nov. 6.

Not even Jim Moran’s kid can steal enough votes to win it for Obama if Romney’s leading by 10 points among independents.

Back to the question, then: What the f–k is Nate Silver talking about? A commenter on yesterday’s post suggested it’s non-random “weighting”:

I found out everything I needed to know about Silver’s “analysis” when I learned that he was overweighting a week-old PPP poll that showed Obama well ahead and underweighting a fresh poll *by the same pollster* that had Obama’s lead almost gone in his “model.” The adjustments were not small. So he was purposefully and consciously giving a large amount of additional weight to old data compared to new data despite the source of both being the same.
This statistical legerdemain is justified by an ipse dixit assertion that PPP’s Dem lean has diminished over the cycle (a change he would have us believe has significant, observable effects over a 7-day period). Then there’s the grotesquely Obama-positive Marist poll to which he gave a huge statistical bump compared to a slew of more recent data for almost two weeks. That poll had a D+11 sample–over twice Obama’s 2008 ID edge and therefore something no rational poll observer could possibly argue with a straight face was likely to be valid. Nate loved it, though, giving it massively outsized influence over his overall results long after it was stale data.

Live by the weighting, die by the weighting, and if it weren’t for the fact that Nate is running this shady scam on the New York Times platform, we could laugh it off as irrelevant cheerleading. Instead, it’s highly relevant cheerleading, which has the effect of shaping elite opinion, which in turn affects media coverage, and thus tends — as a certain other statistical wizard once said — to “hide the decline.”

FLOUNDER: “Will that work?”
OTTER: “It’s gotta work better than the truth.”

Let me point out something: Nate Silver considers Rasmussen disreputable and unreliable, and yet on Thursday we could see three other national polls — ABC/WaPo, Gallup and Monmouth — all showing the same +3 margin for Romney that Rasmussen shows. How is it that these other polling firms report the exact same margin as the No Good Very Bad Stinky Rasmussen Poll Nate Silver Hates?

There is the possibility that Nate’s right and all of us “Nate Silver Truthers” are wrong. And there is the possibility that, even if Silver is wrong, his statistical cheerleading will have the self-fufilling prophecy effect of creating the phenomenon Silver pretends to observe.

On the other hand, there is also the possibility — and I think Nate Silver is severely underestimating this scenario — that he is so completely wrong his credibility will be destroyed on Nov. 6.

If Obama loses, we will not forget that he gave Obama’s likelihood of re-election at a precise 73.1% just ten days before Election Day.

At this point, Nate might as well raise the number to 100% — a guaranteed Obama win — and be done with it, because even if he tries to walk it back now, 73.1% is nearly 3-to-1, and if you lose a bet you called 3-to-1 with 10 days to go, your credibility is permanently screwed.




 

 

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Category: Election 2012, New York Times, Polls

LIVE AT FIVE: 10.26.12

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Both Parties, Presidential Candidates On Track To Raise One BILLION Dollars

It’s all about the Benjamins

Wall Street, professionals donating heavily to Romney and allied SuperPACs; Silicon Valley, retirees giving to DNC and Obama

NYT Reports PRC PM Wen Has Vast Family Business Empire
Billions in hidden riches for family of Communist leader

East Coast Readies For “Frankenstorm”
Utilities, local governments getting ready for up to $1 billion in damage



POLITICS
Romney Remains Focused On Economy; Obama, Media (BIRM) Want To Talk About Rape

Mitt and Meat Loaf sing “God Bless America” at a rally in Defiance, Ohio

President comes off the campaign trail, back to White House – for more campaigning

Colin Powell Endorses Obama Again

Fox Poll: Romney Up 2 In Virginia

Wisconsin Senate Race Gets Down And Dirty

Obama Struggles To Recapture Black Vote

Texas AG Threatens To Arrest UN Election Monitors

Gloria Allred’s Divorce Bombshell More Like Wet Firecracker

California “Top 2” Ballot Succeeds In Eliminating Moderate Candidates

NYT Gets Blocked By Chicoms After Story On Wen Family Wealth Goes Live

US Diplomat Chides Japan Over Revolving Door Politics



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Glut Continues Pushing Prices Down: NYMEX $95.18, Brent $107.45
Apple Results Disappoint As iPad Sales Fail To Impress
Stocks, Commodities Slide; Yen Gains
California The Culprit In Illusory Jobless Claims Drop
Samsung Posts Record Profits On Galaxy Phone Sales
Best Buy Stokes Online Sales, Pricing Initiatives
Amazon Loses $169 Million On LivingSocial
Procter & Gamble Soars Past Profit Expectations
Grains Decline On Tepid Export Sales, Demand Concerns
Apple CEO Cook Blowing Smoke When He Dismisses Rival 7″ Tablets
Microsoft Pins Windows 8 Hopes On Surface
Samsung Beats Nokia, Still Largest Mobile Phone Seller
Pandora Shares Fall On Apple Music Rumors
“Assassin’s Creed III” Preorders Rocket
Apple Sued Over Deal Locking iPhones To AT&T Network
Facebook Backs Zynga As Game Publisher Shrinks



SPORTS
After Game 1’s Panda Power, Giants Win Game 2 With Small Ball

Tigers vainly will bunt to roll foul

Pitching duel ends in Giants squeaking out two runs late for win and 2-0 lead in Series

Hall Of Fame Boxing Trainer Emanuel Steward Dies, 68

Stern To Retire As NBA Commissioner In 2014

Rookie Runs Wild For Bucs In 36-17 Blowout Of Vikings

Lakers Worst Team In NBA Preseason, Even With Dwight Howard

Full NHL Season A Goner

All Things Tebow

Live Shark Falls From Sky At California Golf Course

Nats’ Ryan Zimmerman Has Shoulder Scoped; Expected To Be Ready For Spring Training



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Taylor Swift, Conor Kennedy Split Up

Conor Kennedy and ex-GF Taylor Swift

“It was just a distance thing. No hard feelings. They’re fine.”
Conor Freaked Out – Relationship Went Too Far Too Fast

Lindsay Lohan’s Publicist Quits Over Endless Stream Of Debacles

It’s Jessica Timberlake Now

Jessica Simpson Blindsided By Dad’s Reported Gay Confession

Arnold And “Conan The Barbarian”: Together Again

Lil Wayne Hospitalized After In-Flight Medical Scare

Christina Aguilera Dismisses “Tabloid Trash”

“Cloud Atlas” Slammed For Lack Of Asian Actors, “Yellow Face” Makeup



FOREIGNERS
Syrian Cease-Fire Holding – For Now
Suicide Bomber Kills 37 At Afghan Mosque
Death Toll Tops 100 In Burma’s Rakhine State
Ukraine Election Puts Democracy Under Scrutiny
Disgraced Chicom Pol Bo Xilai Expelled From National People’s Congress, Removing Legislative Immunity
European Parliament Clashes With Ministers Over EU Budget



BLOGS & STUFF
TrogloPundit: Is EJ Dionne Smart Enough To Be A Big Time Columnist? If So, Does He Think His Readers Are Stupid?
WyBlog: He’s The Man With The Plan, Yes He Can, Create Obama-stan
Weasel Zippers: Least Shocking Endorsement – WaPo Backs Obama
Quin Hillyer: The Dishonorable Colin Powell
Washington Free Beacon: John McCain Unloads On Colin Powell Over Obama Endorsement
Protein Wisdom” ELECTION SHOCKER – Republican Colin Powell Endorses Democrat Barack Obama
Hot Air: President Obama Goes Smaller And Smaller
The New Republic: Why Liberals Are Misreading Mourdock
The Blaze: Joe Biden Steps In It Again At Navy SEAL’s Funeral: “Did Your Son Always Have Balls The Size Of Cue Balls?”
Power Line: Who Decided Not To Save Tyrone Woods?
Twitchy: In Creepy OFA Video, Actress Lena Dunham Likens Voting For Obama To Losing Her Virginity
Legal Insurrection: Obama Supporters Rally Around Anti-Mormonism
Gateway Pundit: Meat Loaf Opens For Romney In Ohio, Naked Cowboy Endorses Romney In New York
Jihad Watch: Non-Muslims Have Sex Like Donkeys And Deserve To Get Blown Up, Says UK Jihad Plotter
Lonely Conservative: Gay Man Beaten Nearly To Death For Working On GOP Campaign


Reminder: Links for the FMJRA are due in my mailbox no later than midnight tonight. Thanks!

Category: Live at Five

Neal Rauhauser as Carlito2000:
How Barrett Brown Went Down

Posted on | October 26, 2012 | 5 Comments

My planned campaign road trip has unfortunately been delayed, which gives me a chance to follow up on some recent activity by Neal Rauhauser, who became rather enraged when I pointed out that it was Neal who “drove Barrett Brown off the deep end.”

Rauhauser knows that this is true — the Sept. 12 video meltdown by Brown, the former “Anonymous” spokesman, was a direct consequence of Neal’s manipulations — and he is attempting to evade responsibility for Brown’s arrest.

Brown’s meltdown occurred in the immediate aftermath of his attacks on Patrick “Patterico” Frey. The fact that Brown went after Frey, then flipped out and started raving about Jennifer Emick, Aaron Barr and HB Gary — who loom large in Rauhauser’s favorite conspiracy theories — was all the circumstantial evidence needed to know that Neal was behind it. The day before Brown’s arrest, he posted to Pastebin a transcript of an online chat he had with Frey, which included this question from Brown:

Right now, I think the only real question I have for you is, do you know if Robert Stacy McCain might have had any discussions at all with either Emick or anyone at HBGary at any time, and do you have any correspondence in which he discusses me?

Woo hoo! Now, in point of fact, I never had any communication with Emick until Oct. 19, when she contacted me to talk about her recent conflicts with Neal Rauhauser. And I’ve never talked to anyone at HBGary, period. But this was what Rauhauser wanted Brown to believe, that somehow I was part of a conspiracy involving Emick and HBGary. In the Pastebin, Brown posts this excerpt of an online chat log:

13:47] <Carlito2000> Jen Emick & William Welna getting cornholed by #treehouse on 2600.net
[13:47] <Carlito2000> logs posted by Bitchiest aka Kelly Hallisey
[13:47] <Carlito2000> ringleaders there are Bratty (Kelly), Render64 (her man), Pythorian, girlfriday, DingoLingo & humu
[13:47] <Carlito2000> Emick has been circulating among right wingers for a while now
[13:47] <Carlito2000> Approached by @ZAPEM, tentatively Michele Lessick a while ago. Very likely was working with
[13:47] <Carlito2000> @Liberty_Chick (Mandy Nagy) and @dmatthewstewart (Douglas Matthew Stewart) in pursuit of Anonymous
[13:47] <Carlito2000> they hassle @AnonyOps, @AnonyNewsNet, claiming they are Neal Rauhauser, and otherwise act stupid
[13:47] <Carlito2000> Emick has appeared just once as “Cream” on @BrooksBayne site thetrenches.us, as secret source on Rauhauser
[13:47] <Carlito2000> there is a huge split there – Darby/Stranahan get crosswise with Bayne, nasty civil war stared a month ago
[13:48] <Carlito2000> nachash (@doxbin) release big torrent on @Sanguinarious (Welna) and there was a Jen Emick funpack
[13:48] <Carlito2000> funpack contains a doc about pursuit of Brett Kimberlin, straight out of HBGary playbook, and it was NOT in the initial dump UGnazi took from Emick
[13:49] <BarrettBrown> oic
[13:49] <BarrettBrown> where can I get that?
[13:49] <Carlito2000> source is believed to be Tom Ryan, canna go into details on how we sorted that out
[13:49] <BarrettBrown> okay
[13:49] <BarrettBrown> I know he and Emick are in some petty war
[13:49] <Carlito2000> So, its in Emicks’s directory but the writing ain’t her or ZAPEM, seems very much to be @Liberty_Chick style
[13:49] <BarrettBrown> and vaguely aware of Bitchiest etc conflicts, all that, but haven’t followed as much as I should
13:49] <Carlito2000> So, its in Emicks’s directory but the writing ain’t her or ZAPEM, seems very much to be @Liberty_Chick style
[13:49] <BarrettBrown> and vaguely aware of Bitchiest etc conflicts, all that, but haven’t followed as much as I should
[13:50] <Carlito2000> sadly, I am a subject matter expert on this anondrmama
[13:50] <Carlito2000> So Darby is under suspicion as being the SWAT caller that triggered #Swatgate

What you see here is that “Carlito2000” is offering Brown a file (“funpack”) supposedly containing information about Emick’s “pursuit of Brett Kimberlin,” which Emick says is a complete fabrication by Rauhauser. And you see that “Carlito2000” is also interested in many other of Rauhauser’s obsessions — Mandy Nagy, Doug Stewart, “ZAPEM” and Brandon Darby. Frey tried to get Brown to see this:

Frey: “Carlito2000” sounds an awwwwwful lot like Neal. . . .
I think your source Carlito2000 is Neal. He’s spreading disinformation the way he tends to, by sending it to people other than the target, to make it seem more credible. I know all his tricks by now and he and his people are all boring me.
Brown: I actually know for a fact that he’s not Neal, just like I knew for a fact that @Anony_Ops wasn’t Neal. And if I thought it was Neal I wouldn’t take it all too seriously.

With this in mind go watch the 13-minute video rant that got Barrett Brown arrested last month:

“I got to find out, thanks to a hack — thanks to another f–king stroke of luck, thank God — that HB Gary, since mid-February, had hired an FBI informant . . . making up reasons to raid Barrett Brown and get his information. . . .
“It turns out — from the e-mails that were stolen two months ago and that, thank God, I have — that that guy was an old military buddy of HB Gary executive Jim Butterworth. . . . I know what’s been done to me by these f–king contractors . . .
“FBI agent Robert Smith is a criminal who’s involved in a criminal conspiracy that has, thank God, been revealed, part of which was evident months ago, because I told the f–king FBI agent Daniel Forseck . . . when his f–king little Jennifer Emick — f–king informant, HB Gary employee — bragging about the sh-t, she gave me the number. I guess she wanted to talk to me and see what I’d say.”

So, who fed Brown this conspiracy theory about Emick and HB Gary? “Carlito2000,” a/k/a Neal Rauhauser.

Category: Barrett Brown, The Kimberlin Files
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