The Other McCain

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

Is Anyone Surprised by This News?

Posted on | July 30, 2012 | 17 Comments

Neutral objective journalist George Stephanopoulos must be shocked:

A deputy press secretary for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign married an ABC reporter over the weekend. The ABC reporter, Matthew Jaffe, “covering the 2012 presidential campaign,” according to his biography on the website of ABC News. “For the past year he traveled around the country covering the Republican primary, from the Iowa Straw Poll to the various debates to this year’s primaries and caucuses.”
The deputy press secretary Jaffe married is Katie Hogan. Many members of Obama’s reelection team and the press celebrated the wedding together Saturday.

Really, can anyone tell where the Obama campaign ends and the mainstream media begins? Is there even a line left to blur? Andrew Breitbart called it the “Democrat-Media Complex.” He was right. And when Bernie Goldberg called it A Slobbering Love Affair, it was more than a mere figure of speech.

 

Category: Uncategorized

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Ninety-Nine Days Until November 6

Posted on | July 30, 2012 | 19 Comments

The Republican National Convention begins Aug. 27, which is now just four weeks away. More importantly, we are now inside the final 100-day window of the 2012 presidential campaign. This is as good time as any to ask, “Where does the race stand?”

Today on Morning Joe — I watch MSNBC so you don’t have to — Chuck Todd got under my skin by asserting that Mitt Romney “lost” June and July by failing to establish his narrative or something. This assertion struck me as preposterous, so I checked the Real Clear Politics average of national polls to examine the trend:

On Feb. 18, while Romney was in the midst of the toughest part of the GOP primary fight, Obama stretched out to his biggest lead of the year, 6.1 points (49.3% to 43.2%). Obama continued to lead Romney by a sizeable margin through the spring campaign: 5.2 points (49.5-44.3) on March 7,  and 5.3 points (48.5-43.2) on April 10, the day Rick Santorum quit the race, effectively ceding the nomination to Romney.

In the aftermath of Santorum’s exit, as might be expected, the race quickly tightened, as GOP-leaning voters rallied to Romney. By May 8, the race was nearly tied: Obama 46.2, Romney 46.0.

Since May, the RCP margin has widened slightly: Obama is at 46.6 and Romney is at 45.0. That’s mainly because the Obama campaign unloaded tens of millions of dollars of negative ads against Romney, an early spending spree that has caused Democrats concern because (a) it is so clearly unsustainable and (b) June FEC numbers showed Romney and the GOP are now strongly out-fundraising Obama and the Democrats.

Thus, the minor gain for Obama in the past two months — moving the RCP average a net 1.4 points in his favor — was a good news/bad news scenario for him: Yes, the barrage of ads raised Romney’s negatives, rallied Democrats and established the predicate for future attacks. However, this success came at a steep cost, and a price that Obama simply can’t afford to keep paying. When the stretch run begins after Labor Day, Obama won’t be able to outspend Romney, certainly not at the 2-to-1 pace of June. Furthermore, once you start digging down in the internals of polls, you see that Obama’s attacks didn’t do much to move independent voters, who still have very negative views about Obama’s handling of the economy — the No. 1 issue, and one that seems to be going from bad to worse for the incumbent.

Everybody understands the basic strategies of each side: Republicans want the election to be a referendum on Obama’s first term, while Democrats want to make the election a choice between the incumbent and the (demonized) Romney.

This referendum-or-choice battle to shape the narrative is really what the 2012 campaign comes down to. So who is winning that battle?

Forget Romney for a minute and look at the president’s numbers in the RCP average: He has steadily drifted downward from nearly 50 percent in February-March to below 47 percent now. These are perilous numbers for an incumbent because (as everybody knows) late-deciding voters tend to break toward the challenger. Having checked the numbers, I sent a few Twitter messages to Chuck Todd:


Now, let me make clear: I like Chuck Todd. He is a solid political reporter and less biased toward Democrats than many other major-media journalists. But to say Romney “lost” June and July? Sorry, Chuck: Doing stenography for David Axelrod isn’t reporting.

The latest Gallup tracking poll has the race a tie, and the latest Rasmussen tracking poll has Romney up by 3 points. If Romney keeps “losing” at this rate, he’ll “lose” all the way to the White House.

UPDATE: Here’s Scott Rasmussen in his latest weekly column:

Regardless of what the economists say, most Americans believe we are in a recession and have been for more than four years. Despite that dismal starting point, just 40 percent think things will get better in five years.
This suggests that underlying perceptions of the economy have taken a darker turn. Back in 2009, most Americans thought the country was experiencing a normal business-cycle recession. It was harsher than most but expected to be a short-term matter. Throughout 2009, a plurality of Americans thought the economy would be better within a year.
Now, a plurality believes it will get worse over the next year, and many Americans are wondering if our nation will ever make it back. Only 14 percent now believe today’s children will be better off than their parents. That’s an all-time low.

Hope of a recovery under Obama is fading. All Romney needs to do is convince voters he would not be worse than Obama, and Mitt wins.

UPDATE II: OK, let’s suppose Chuck Todd wants to shrug off Rasmussen’s analysis. How about Jeff Jones of Gallup?

Creating good jobs, reducing corruption in the federal government, and reducing the federal budget deficit score highest when Americans rate 12 issues as priorities for the next president to address. Americans assign much less importance to increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and dealing with environmental concerns.

Issues that favor Republicans easily outrank issues that favor Democrats. You cannot look at numbers like that and say Romney is losing.

 





 

 

RECENTLY:

 


Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Polls

‘Knock Three Times On The Ceiling If You Want Woobie. . .’

Posted on | July 30, 2012 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

‘. . .twice on the pipe, if the answer is bloh-owe.’

Mental Recession points to the story of the day, the new Richard Miniter book article in the DC Caller (Google malware alert?) about Verlerie Jarrett canceling the bin Laden raid in an elaborate Tony Orlando and Dawn reference that seems to be escaping a lot of folks.

Not to go too far on a limb defending #OccupyResoluteDesk, but the DC Caller mentions that:

Miniter, a two-time New York Times best-selling author, cites an unnamed source with Joint Special Operations Command who had direct knowledge of the operation and its planning.

Military guys talk a lot of trash (e.g. this post title). Authors like a juicy tidbit to sell books. Maybe it went down like that; maybe it didn’t. Perhaps if the finger pointer was willing to go on record by name, and not point a fickle finger via an author, I might ascribe more weight to it.

Category: Barack Obama

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.30.12

Posted on | July 30, 2012 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
UN Says 200,000 Have Fled Battle In Aleppo

Rebels still in control of Syria's second-largest city?

Outgunned rebels fighting an effective guerrilla war in the streets against loyalists

Romney Raises Campaign Cash In Israel
Notes that Israel’s per capita GDP is eight times that of the Palestinians

Bill Clinton To Take Center Stage At Democratic Convention
No solo speech for Joe Biden



POLITICS
Have Race Relations Improved Under Obama?

Post-racial President?

Poll says people don’t think so. Next question?

Joe Biden Fires Up AFT Conference In Detroit

Governor Patrick To Sign Tribal Casino Compact

Dick Cheney Thinks Palin Veep Pick By McCain Was A Mistake

Massive, Growing Debt Looms Over U.S. Politics

Labor Hopes To Pass Michigan Constitutional Amendment Barring “Right To Work” Laws

GOP Senate Race In Texas Goes Down To The Wire



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
U.S. Oil May Break $100 As Stimulus Drums Beat Louder: NYMEX $90.39, Brent $106.43
European Stocks Rise On Stimulus Hopes
GM Sacks Global Marketing Chief Over Man U Deal
Japan’s Industrial Output Falls As ROK Confidence Sinks
India’s Northern Grid Fails, Eight States Blacked Out
Microsoft Debuts Mice, Keyboards For Windows 8
Alleged iPhone 5 Built From Leaked Parts
Surface To Arrive With Windows 8 On 10/26
Two ROKs Arrested For Data Theft From 8.7 Million Cellphone Customers
New Apple Ads Make Mac Users Look Inept, Foolish
Did “Tony Hawk’s HD” Set The Stage For A Franchise Revival?



SPORTS
Bobby V’s Ejection Sparks Sox Rally

Boston Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine

BoSox manager ejected after prolonged rant at home plate umpire; Sox go on to beat Yankees 3-2

Jimmie Johnson Flawless At Brickyard

Dodgers Complete Sweep Of Giants, 4-0

Greinke Takes Loss In First Start With Angels As Rays Win 2-0

Entire Rockies Defense Has Brain Fart

Reds Post 10th Straight Win

Antron Brown Wins Top Fuel Final In Sonoma

A Bunch Of Stuff Happened At The Olympics, I Guess

Offense Comes Through For Nats In 11th, Capping Wild 11-10 Tilt With Brewers



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Katie & Suri Feed Giraffes At Bronx Zoo

Katie Holmes smiling after dinner date with lawyer

Saturday at the park with Suri

More Than You Ever Wanted To Read About The Kristen Stewart “Cheating Scandal”

Mark-Paul Gosselaar Is Married!

Evelyn Lozada – Stuck With Ochocinco

Brooke Mueller Thanks Charlie Sheen For New Boyfriend

“Modern Family” Cast Reaches Deal To End Salary Standoff

Katy Perry & John Mayer Hooking Up

Dane Cook Apologizes For Massacre Joke



FOREIGNERS
Chinese “Patriotic” Education Draws Protests In Hong Kong
Bolivia Polls Natives On Jungle Highway
Poll: Majority Of Germans Want Greece Out Of The Euro
Dozens Die As Fire Engulfs Overnight Train In India
Romania’s President Survives Impeachment Vote
Norks: We’re Not Changing!
Syrian FM Arrives In Iran As Fighting Continues In Aleppo
Pussy Riot Members Go On Trial In Moscow
UN Rights Envoy Probes Ethnic Clash In Burma
Nork Floods Kill 88, Leave Thousands Homeless



BLOGS & STUFF
Valley Of The Shadow: Governor Romney Does A Mitzvah While The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg Goes Meshuga
WyBlog: The Doctor Won’t See You Now
Gateway Pundit: Israelis Give Romney Standing O As He Announces “It Is Deeply Moving To Be In Jerusalem, The Capitol Of Israel”
Da Tech Guy: Demoralized As Hell, Israel/Wimp Edition
JustOneMinute: What’s Up, Doc?
Lonely Conservative: Wait, Who’s The Wimp In This Election?
Legal Insurrection: Upset Brewing In Texas? PPP Poll Shows Cruz Up Big
NRO Corner: Cruz Has Double-Digit Lead
Conservatives4Palin: Are Dick Cheney And The GOP Establishment Really Interested In Getting Rid Of Obama? Also, Liz Cheney Disagrees With Dad On Palin
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner: Politicizing The Voting Rights Act Dims Its Luster
AmSpecBlog: Weekend Political Wrapup

Category: Live at Five

Why Is Fauquier County, Virginia, Waging War Against Small Farmers?

Posted on | July 29, 2012 | 30 Comments

Zoning is the closest thing to fascism most Americans will ever know, and it’s remarkable how local governments use zoning laws to limit the rights of the little guy while rewarding the wealthy and well-connected. Big developers who know how to work the system can almost always get whatever they want from zoning boards, while the small property owner is at the mercy of politicians and bureaucrats.

Property rights of small farmers are under assault in Fauquier County, Virginia, where a local farmer has fallen afoul of the Zoning Fascists:

Located on a 70-acre farm near the village of Paris, Virginia, about 50 miles west of Washington, D.C., the Piedmont Agriculture Academy LLC (PAA) has quickly become a fixture in the local community. PAA functions as both an animal-rescue farm and a place where people can buy the many products originating on the property. Some 168 animals have found shelter on the farm, including alpacas, llamas, emus, a miniature horse, and a vast assortment of chickens, goats, ducks, sheep, turkeys, and cows. Dozens of the well-maintained animals are sheered every year, and their fiber is hand-washed and sold as yarn, socks, scarves, gloves, and nest builders. This year, the farmers who founded PAA have planted nearly 2000 tomato plants and 1000 eggplants on the property and have set up an apiary for producing honey.
A tastefully renovated barn serves as the farm’s on-site store, where vegetables, eggs, fresh and dried herbs, honeybee products, soaps, and handspun fibers from the livestock – all produced on the property – are sold to eager customers.
But if the Fauquier County Department of Community Development (DCD) has its way, the farm may soon have to cease operating. In June, the Piedmont Agriculture Academy was served with a “Notice of Zoning Violation” from the DCD.

Basically, Martha Boneta’s attempt to run a small business on her property has been outlawed by a new ordinance that retroactively restricts land use under the business license she received last year.

There is a hearing on the case this Thursday in Warrenton, and the Northern Virginia Tea Party is calling on its members to turn out in force:

1 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 2
10 Hotel Street, Warrenton VA 20187

For more information, contact Rick Buchanan of the Fauquier County Tea Party: [email protected].

Category: Virginia

World’s Youngest Blogger: Feel The Cute

Posted on | July 29, 2012 | 15 Comments

Category: World's Youngest Blogger

Tina Brown’s Bankrupt Magazine Newsweek Calls Mitt Romney a ‘Wimp’

Posted on | July 29, 2012 | 22 Comments

Newsweek magazine lost $20 million last year, each weekly issue therefore representing an operating loss of $400,000. Two years ago, Sidney Harman bought the magazine (and its $50 million debt) for a token $1, and subsequently merged it with Tina Brown’s Daily Beast, which has spent the past four years losing $10 million annually in its own right. Tina Brown has now deployed the notoriously rugged he-man stud Michael Tomasky to describe Mitt Romney as a wimp.

Yeah. Profit is for wimps, I guess.

Category: Election 2012, Media Bias, Mitt Romney, Newsweek

The Olympic Princess Fantasy

Posted on | July 29, 2012 | 46 Comments

U.S. gymnast Gabby Douglass, 16, is nicknamed “The Flying Squirrel.”

“The reigning world champion Jordyn Wieber left the Olympic gymnastics arena in tears on Sunday after failing to qualify for the finals of the all-around competition.
“Wieber, 17, of DeWitt, Mich., was long considered one of the favorites to win the gold medal in the sport’s glamour event. . . .
“But in the qualifying round Sunday, Wieber simply could not deliver.”
— New York Times

Can we talk about Olympic women’s gymnastics as a cultural phenomenon? As a focus of widespread interest, the sport entered public consciousness in 1972 with Russian gold medalist Olga Korbut’s performance in Munich, then intensified in 1976 when Rumania’s Nadia Comaneci scored an unprecedented perfect “10” in Montreal.

Comaneci won the gold medal when she was only 14 years old.

She had been training at coach Bela Karolyi’s gymnastics school since she was 7. While she was being celebrated with slow-motion montages on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Nadia was also being declared a “Hero of Socialist Labor” by Rumania’s vicious dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu.

The general American attitude toward such feats during the Cold War was that, yes, of course the Communist countries dominated certain sports where, in a totalitarian dictatorship, children could be sent to train year-round at early ages in order to provide their governments with a propaganda coup in international athletic competition.

We weren’t too impressed with the quadrennial Helga-and-Boris Show at the Olympics: Yeah, the East Germans just won the women’s shotput.

America had football and NASCAR and Arnold Palmer. We didn’t give a damn about some hypermuscular Commie sideshow freak.

Women’s gymnastics, however, was different. For some reason, the spectacle of petite teenagers doing backflips and cartwheels had a marketing appeal that other sports lacked. Women’s gymnastics had the same basic “ballerina princess” vibe as figure skating.

This was especially true of  the floor exercise. The vault, the uneven bars, the balance beam — yeah, OK, but the floor exercise was performed to music, so it was like dancing, and this appealed to the whole “ballerina princess” fantasy embedded deeply in the mind of every girl who ever took six weeks of dance lessons.

So while Americans moms have never gone nuts encouraging their daughters to compete with Helga the German shotput champ, from 1976 onward there was a rush of moms signing up their little girls for gymnastics. It’s not about athletics, it’s about the princess fantasy.

We are not supposed to notice or comment on this phenomenon, because it contradicts the androgynous gender-neutral ethos of feminism. The fact that the Olympic princess phenomenon represents the preferences of women themselves — the persistent admiration of distinctly feminine traits — is one of those “false consciousness” things, a violation of the egalitarian ideal that the gender theorists insist is an expression of oppressive patriarchal norms.

Feminists believe that men and women are exactly the same in their aptitudes and interests. Any observable difference between them can only be the result of discriminatory sexist social expectations. Larry Summers was practically lynched at Harvard University for doubting this.

Kyla Ross, 15, is the youngest U.S. Olympic gymnast

Something else you’re not supposed to notice or comment on: As a cultural ideal, women’s gymnastics is kind of weird.

In no other sport are top competitors so young. Kyla Ross, 15, is the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team, whose other members — Gabby Douglass and McKayla Maroney, both 16, Jordyn Wieber, 17, and Aly Raisman, 18 — bring the average age up to 16.4.

Three-fifths of the U.S. team members are no older than the minimum age of 16 (Ross is able to compete because she turns 16 before the end of the calendar year) and none is 19 or older.

Basically, by the time you’re old enough to buy a drink, you’re over the hill in world-class women’s gymnastics which, for the sake of honesty, should be renamed girl’s gymnastics.

Four years ago, it was suspected that some of the Chinese gymnasts were underage — not the first time such suspicions had arisen.

At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Chinese were caught using a 14-year-old on their team. In no other sport does youth  provide such an advantage, as the New York Times explains:

Using younger, but obviously world-class, gymnasts is an advantage because small bodies in earlier stages of puberty can pull off bigger tricks in the air. Growing taller and maturing, with accompanying breasts and hips, complicates flips and twists.

In other words, it’s not a sport for grown-ups. Pubescent girls can perform at levels that no mature woman can hope to match, and the petite physique type which is ideal for women’s gymnastics is ideal in no other sport. As a matter of fact, the intense training and strict diet required of a top competitive gymnast has the effect of delaying normal physical development.

Olympic gymnasts can therefore be described as abnormal in roughly the same sense that a 6-foot-6, 300-pound defensive tackle is abnormal. But the gigantic tackle isn’t an NFL All-Pro at 15 years old and a washed-up has-been by age 20.

Feminists complain that Barbie dolls present little girls with an impossible ideal, but isn’t the same thing true of Olympic gymnastics?

We aren’t supposed to notice or mention this, because the celebration of Olympic achievement — “USA! USA! USA!” — is marketed so heavily on TV as to permit no space for critical thought.

Responsible adulthood, however, requires us to resist the mindless consumption of whatever TV is selling, and “Olympic fever” is a made-for-TV commodity whose value should be viewed skeptically.

If there is to be a competition to determine which nation has the most highly-skilled diminutive adolescent girls, it is my patriotic duty to hope that America wins the contest. But I reserve the right to observe that this is a freakishly weird thing to compete over.

UPDATE: Linked by Ann Althouse who quotes her own 1988 letter to the New York Times, suggesting that the sport of gymnastics artificially favors a certain body type. That’s not my point at all. Rather, I am pointing to the cultural factors that made this one sport (rather than say, the mile run or the pentathlon) such a celebrated part of Olympic competition. It’s a matter of market appeal, and the popularity of women’s gymnastics therefore has a significance — it tells us something about our culture, although I’m not sure what that something is.

Category: Culture, Feminism, Sports
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin