Ain’t I Done Told Ya So? (Part II)

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“If Romney gets the nomination and we reach late September with Romney leading the polls, what do you think the Democrat-Media Complex will do? Whatever It Takes to Win, sweetheart.
“Can’t you see the five-part New York Times series on the history of Mormonism? Can’t you see Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News and David Gregory on Meet the Press doing Serious Journalism about all the beliefs and practices of the LDS, and ponderously asking What It Means for America?”
— Robert Stacy McCain, March 6, 2012

“Now that Democrats are near-certain that Romney is the nominee, however, the media is going to start covering Mitt’s Mormonism in a very serious way — ‘Oh, look, he’s a fringe kook!’ — as if this were an entirely legitimate topic of political discussion.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, April 2

“Now part of Romney’s religion problem is that he’s a part of a new religion. Established religions like Judaism, which is about 4,000 years old, and Christianity, which is about 2,000 years old, don’t easily warm up to new religions like Romney’s, which is only 182 years old. . . . Mormonism was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was completely sanctified in the religion he invented to go with it. Which Mitt Romney says he believes.”
— Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC, April 3

Look, I wasn’t the only one to see this coming: Da Tech Guy reminds us he warned us about this back in February.

Everybody’s crying “unfair” now — including Kevin Williamson at National Review — but since when do Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) give a damn about fairness?

And my friends, this has just barely begun. That little shot from O’Donnell? It was like the signal gun to start a massive barrage.

Maybe you have never done any research into the history of Mormonism. Maybe you have no idea how much material there is to work with. Maybe you are unaware of how many ex-Mormons and other critics of Mormonism have already gotten in touch with national news producers and reporters, eager to help them with “research” for all those in-depth feature articles and multi-part series about the LDS church.

If you don’t know any of that stuff, you can be forgiven for thinking that any negative media focus on Mitt Romney’s religion would automatically be seen as unfair and bigoted by independent voters. But just wait and see: If Romney actually does win the Republican nomination, and if it ever appears that Mitt poses a serious threat to Obama’s re-election, then the gloves will come off and you will be disabused of your naïveté.

You know who’s going to be shocked the worst by this? Agnostic secularists, whose general attitude toward religious belief is, “What difference does it make which discredited superstition somebody claims to believe in? All religions are equally false, right?”

A lot of the agnostic secularists in the GOP have that kind of attitude, and can’t imagine that there is anything about Mormonism that might be truly offensive to people.

Like I said: Just wait and see.

UPDATE: Moe Lane asks:

Does Harry Reid have the courage to boycott
MSNBC over Lawrence O’Donnell’s bigotry?

Don’t be silly, Moe! Yes, Harry Reid is nominally a Mormon but, like all Democrats, his true religion is the Democrat Party Gospel. Just look at Nancy Pelosi, who claims to be Catholic.

UPDATE II: Serious Journalism, with David Gregory:

Of Romney’s religion, Gregory said Mormonism was at the core of Romney’s character, but suggested he was afraid to talk about it.
“Let’s be honest, this is the core of who Mitt Romney is,” he said. “He was a missionary in France for two years. He has been a bishop in the church, which, in the Mormon church, is effectively like a a priest. Philanthropically, he’s made huge contributions. He’s had a big impact on the church. And yet he doesn’t talk about it. It’s the core of who he is, and yet he doesn’t feel like it’s safe to talk about.”

It’s so predictable, isn’t it?

 

NEWS: Michelle Malkin Joins Board of Directors for National Bloggers Club

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A major score for the new organization:

A reliable source has revealed to Red Alert Politics that Michelle Malkin has agreed to join the board of directors for a new association for right-of-center bloggers, the National Bloggers Club. . . .
In addition to building a high profile board of directors, the National Bloggers Club has already made impressive progress in uniting independent bloggers in the conservative movement for good causes.
Recently they became the first organization to provide photo identification credentials to bloggers for press events. They also started a scholarship for Citizen Journalists, Remember Breitbart, in honor of the late Andrew Breitbart, a supporter of Blog Bash and the National Bloggers Club. . . .

Read the rest at the Washington Examiner.

You’d Think A Supreme Court Justice Would Know This

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by Smitty

Somebody pointed me to the New England Journal of Medicine, with an interesting Elena Kagan quote from last week’s oral argument, emphasis mine:

Roberts also noted a mismatch between covered benefits and each person’s potential need. Speaking to the government’s lawyer, he said, “[T]he policies that you’re requiring people to purchase involve . . . maternity and newborn care, pediatric services, and substance [abuse] treatment. It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need [these services] and yet that is part of what you require them to purchase.”
But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg quickly retorted, “If you’re going to have insurance, that’s how insurance works.” “This is especially true,” added Kagan, “because in this context, the subsidizers eventually become the subsidized.”

Um, how do you know that, Justice Kagan, without being a prophet? Wikipedia on the Ecological Fallacy:

An ecological fallacy. . .is a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data in an ecological study, whereby inferences about the nature of individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong.

You might quibble that health care statistics are not an ecological study per se, but I submit that the point still holds: once you roll individuals into a population, you’re done. It’s a one-way process.

Come to think of it, all of this Socialist clap-trap is the Ecological Fallacy writ large. Clearly you have to be a believer in the Progressive Faith to unplug reason sufficiently to buy into this nonsense.

Update: crikey, what an ignoramus! I had not understood what an embarrassingly know-nothing twit the good Justice Kagan is. Adrienne is rather worked up, and has the audio:

Listen, you disgusting squid of a small minded, intellectually challenged poseur. You only sit on the Supreme Court because an equally small minded, intellectually challenged, malignant narcissist squid of a president who, in my opinion, is not even eligible to be president, and who was voted in by the small-minded losers of this country appointed you to the position.

Why so torqued? If you listen to the clip, Kagan is on about “Federal Dollars”, and wondering at what point below 100% government payment for medical care that the system would become coercive.

If dollars are horsepower in the economy, then the economy is the horse. The Federal government is a cart. Progressivism is that Federal government cart bearing a printing press called the Federal Reserve that confuses itself with the horse.

Kagan, you should recuse yourself, not merely from the ObamaCare decision, but from the SCOTUS entirely. When the history of this time period is written, yours is likely to be a special blend of infamy and idiocy.

Mark Levin and the Omens of Doom

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“If Romney is indeed now the ‘inevitable’ nominee, it is a status he has obtained by crushing conservative opposition in an astonishingly expensive and negative campaign . . .”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Predictably Predictable,” The American Spectator, April 4, 2012

This evening, Mark Levin led his nationally syndicated radio show by reading key excerpts from that column. It was evident that “The Great One” sees the same ominous signs that concern me, that he knows what these omens portend, and that he would like to alert his listeners to the fact that they are being propagandized and indoctrinated.

Unfortunately, judging from the reactions by Levin’s callers, there are a lot of people who don’t get it. They misunderstand what Levin is saying — what I am saying — about the obvious weaknesses of Mitt Romney’s campaign. The uncomprehending callers seemed to think that this is merely a matter of personal opinion, and that their admiration for Romney or their disdain for Rick Santorum are the most relevant facts to be discussed.

Some people can’t see the omens or lack the experience to interpret what these auguries signify. When we try to point out to them the portents of impending doom, these people respond, “Well, that’s your opinion.”

It’s a waste of breath to argue with people who think that way. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but we’ll have to wait and see, and there’s no point getting in arguments with people who are merely trying to belittle my intelligence, my knowledge, my experience and my judgment.

Let’s just suppose that you don’t know me from Adam’s housecat, OK? Go ahead and decide that, because I’m telling you something you don’t want to hear, something that contradicts your own opinions, then I must be wrong. Fine: No sweat off my nose and, in the present case, if Mitt Romney actually proves to be a triumphantly successful candidate who clobbers Obama in November, then I will be overjoyed that the Reign of Error is ended.

But . . . what if I’m right?

Never mind. Rule out that possibility. I’ve never been right about anything before, so far as you know. How about Richard Viguerie?

As Bloomberg’s Heidi Przybyla noted, the “defining feature of the 2012 Republican presidential primary race” has been Romney’s relentlessly negative campaign. According to Przybyla’s research, “Since the contests began, Restore Our Future has spent $35 million on commercials attacking Santorum and Newt Gingrich” and “just $1.1 million promoting Romney.” . . .
Romney’s negative ads, many of them factually questionable, have carpet bombed the conservatives in the race. . . .
However, these attacks have done nothing to build support for Mitt Romney, especially among movement conservatives, and to the extent that Romney can claim front runner status it is because he has come to be seen as the “least worst” alternative by rank-and-file Republican primary voters. . . .
Even if one accepts the fuzzy math that Romney claims puts him half way to the 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination — and we don’t — his negative campaign has left him with a substantial enthusiasm deficit, and no real base upon which to mount a winning campaign against Barack Obama.

But you don’t know Richard Viguerie from Adam’s housecat, either. He’s just some dude you never heard of before. How about Stu Rothenberg?

The bottom line, of course, is that nobody — not his critics and not his allies — really believes Mitt Romney. . . .
The question is whether, in November, Romney may be in a similar position as Obama was or whether the fact that nobody actually believes Romney will destroy his presidential bid completely.
Is Romney such a mass of contradictions that voters can look at him and project their positions on him, allowing them to support him? Or is his credibility so shot that too many voters will simply conclude that they can’t trust him, making it impossible for them to support him?

But never mind that: Who is this Rothenberg guy, anyway, huh? You’re waaaayy smarter than him — and Viguerie, and me, and Mark Levin.

Now the Romney campaign is threatening to “destroy” Santorum in Pennsylvania. And Debbie Wasserman-Schultz says Mitt’s Mormonism is “off limits” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Like I said, some things are predictably predictable.

UPDATE: Romney supporter Cindy Cooper is upset with me. Since I filed my column (I sent it to The American Spectator about 1:30 a.m.) there were evidently late returns that changed Romney’s margin of victory from 4 points to 7 points, and boosted Romney’s total vote to more than 340,000, whereas it had been about 300,000 with 98% of precincts reporting.

OK, so that fact is corrected. Now, what about turnout?

In 2010, in the Wisconsin GOP Senate primary — held in September — Ron Johnson got more than 500,000 votes, and then got 1.1 million votes in the general election to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.

That was a mid-term campaign, and you see that Romney got a substantially lower total in this year’s presidential primary than did Johnson in 2010.  In the 2008 presidential election — turnout is always higher in presidential elections than in mid-terms — John McCain got 1.26 million votes in Wisconsin, but that was only 43 percent of the vote; Barack Obama won with 1.68 million (56%).

Now, a point: WISCONSIN IS AN OPEN PRIMARY STATE.

This means that any voter — Democrat, Republican, independent — can vote in any primary. In 2008, “Super Tuesday” was Feb. 5, and Mitt Romney quit the race on Thursday, Feb. 7 (I was reporting it live at CPAC when the news broke), effectively ceding the nomination to John McCain. However, the Democratic race between Obama and Hillary Clinton that year continued to be hotly contested into the spring.

So, when Wisconsin held its open primary on Feb. 19 — two weeks after McCain sealed the deal for the GOP nomination — 1.1 million people voted in the Democratic primary, while only 395,000 people voted in the GOP primary, which McCain won with 55% (225,000) to Mike Huckabee’s 37% (151,000).

All of this I note, because Cindy Cooper is angry at me for saying that turnout in this year’s Republican primary was “phenomenally low,” when Eric Ostermier of the Humphrey Institute writes:

Wisconsin Republican primary voter turnout surged more than 91 percent in 2012 from 410,607 voters in 2008 to over 785,000 on Tuesday. . . .
In terms of the raw number of votes, the 2012 GOP primary was the second largest on record in Wisconsin behind only 1980 when the three-way battle between Reagan, Bush, and Anderson brought 907,853 individuals out to vote that April.

So, clearly the phrase “phenomenally low” was an inaccurate description of the turnout but — but — these numbers are still important, if you keep in mind that Wisconsin is an open primary state. The cycle-to-cycle “surge” from 2008 to 2012 is explained entirely by the fact that the 2008 GOP campaign was effectively over, while the Democrats were still going tooth-and-nail.

The best recent comparison (insofar as any such comparison doesn’t suffer from an apples-to-oranges problem) is to 1980, when there was a Democrat incumbent (Jimmy Carter) in the White House, and the GOP primary was still competitive. Turnout in 2012 thus represents a 14% drop from 1980. And keep in mind that Wisconsin’s population has grown 21 percent (from 4.7 to 5.7 million) since 1980.

Despite all that, I clearly got some facts wrong, and I’m correcting the record here. Far be it from me to attempt a “fake but accurate” defense. But the data still indicate that Mitt Romney is a much weaker GOP candidate than Ron Johnson or even John McCain.

We will have to wait and see what happens to know whether the omens and portents accurately foretold events.

Mean RNC Pokes Fun At BHO’s Sincere Efforts To Save Gaia

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by Smitty

Our future hangs in the balance. The sun is riding so low, it could get stuck on Mount Everest while making its nightly lap about the planet.* What’s a President to do? Recycle his speeches. And yet, here is the mean ol’ RNC, serving up the President’s careful re-use of speech material as though is was a Bad Thing:

Listen, people: Barack is workin’ real hard, tryin’ to save the planet. How about a little peace, love, and understanding?

via Hot Air

Update: linked by The Strident Conservative

*To refute the pernicious rumor that I am a flat-Earther.

Is Allen West Predicting A Total #OccupyResoluteDesk Meltdown?

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by Smitty

Usually when he’s taking fire from FaceBook, it’s Sarah Palin. This time, Rep. Alan West lights up BHO:

President Obama’s recent rhetorical rants over the past two days are not indicative of a confident incumbent President. His actions and words more so resemble the flailing of a drowning person caught in a rip current at night with no one around for a rescue. The fella doth protest too much in desperation.

I, for one, would be completely unsurprised to have an ‘unexpected’ medical diagnosis grip BHO in time for the Democ**t convention to nominate Hillary. Maybe you get a couple of months of a Biden Administration, but so what?

via PJ Tatler

Jesus Knew Fear?

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by Smitty

Seriously, Mr. President: what in the eternal location of Karl Marx are you talking about: “Like us, Jesus knew doubt. Like us, Jesus knew fear.”
Contrast Matthew 27:46 with Psalm 22 very carefully before contending that Jesus really doubted, or, even at the end, really knew fear. Maybe He did. But to argue past a ‘maybe’ is to take it too far.

No, what strikes the serious reader of the Gospels is that, given a spectrum with Jesus on one end and Pontius Pilate on the other, you, Mr. President, resemble the latter far more than the former.

But we’ll be about affording you copious time to repent after the first Tuesday in November.

More at The Camp of the Saints.

via PJ Tatler

Update: linked by Obi’s Sister.

How Wrong Was Michelle Goldberg About Wisconsin Planned Parenthood Bombing? UPDATE: ‘I Lit Up the Clinic,’ Suspect Told Police; Offers Guilty Plea at Hearing

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“Typically, we see an upsurge in anti-abortion violence . . . when the anti-abortion movement kind of thinks it was on the verge of victory, and then finds itself somehow thwarted. . . . When there’s frustration among the anti-abortion forces, violence often results.”
— Michelle Goldberg on MSNBC, April 2, 2012

What do we know about Francis Gerald Grady, the man police have charged with Sunday’s firebombing incident at a Planned Parenthood office in Grand Chute, Wisconsin? Not a whole lot yet.

The main thing we know about Grady, 50, is that he has a lengthy criminal record dating back at least to 1999, when he was charged with failing to pay $2,128 in taxes. In May 2000, Grady pleaded guilty to cocaine possession, Three years later, Grady was accused of violating a restraining order taken out by his extranged wife, Sally. Five years ago, in June 2007, Grady pleaded guilty to felony bail-jumping and failure to pay child support.

In July 2008, Grady was arrested for reckless driving with a revoked license — he had apparently been twice convicted of DUI — and pleaded no contest in April 2010. He was represented in that case by a public defender. In August 2010, Grady was charged with “resisting or obstructing an officer,” and pleaded guilty a year later, when he was sentenced to a year on probation.

Grady’s most recent offense, prior to the Planned Parenthood incident, was when he was arrested on Dec. 26 with resisting or obstructing an officer. The district attorney formally filed that charge on Friday — Grady was scheduled for a May 3 court appearance on the charge — and two days after the charge was filed, Grady is alleged to have attacked the Planned Parenthood office in Grand Chute.

Grady’s  “bomb” was reportedly “built of a plastic bottle and chemicals that included an incendiary agent,” and was described in news accounts as a “small device” that did “minor damage” to the empty office. About an hour after that Sunday evening incident, Grady got into a traffic accident. He was subsequently identified as a suspect in the Planned Parenthood attack based on surveillance video.

This is most of what we know so far about Francis Gerald Grady, whose address is N4110 Highway E #1, Kaukauna, Wisconsin. If I had at my disposal the resources of a major news organization — such as MSNBC or the Daily Beast/Newsweek, which employs Michelle Goldberg — I believe I could dispatch a journalist to Outagamie County, Wisconsin, with an assignment to produce an in-depth feature on Grady, whose lengthy career as a petty criminal has finally brought him national notoriety.

In fact, unless I start seeing some such in-depth reporting PDQ, I might even be tempted to make that trip myself, and I guarantee you within 72 hours of my arrival in Outagamie County, I could produce a few thousand words with photos and videos that would be well worth the effort. But I’ve got other matters to attend to now. My wife and I still haven’t filed our taxes, and figuring up the travel expenses is going to be a time-consuming headache. Plus, there’s still a presidential campaign underway in nearby Pennsylvania, not to mention the fact that I’m going to have to deal with the hassles related to my recent campaign-trail encounter with the vigilant police officers of Livonia, Louisiana.

Michelle Goldberg and MSNBC, however, have no such excuse. On Monday night, MSNBC turned this Wisconsin incident into a politicized drama, with Goldberg contextualizing it as the “anti-abortion movement” feeling “thwarted,” with “frustration among the anti-abortion forces” leading to an “upsurge in anti-abortion violence.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Really, Michelle? Now that police have a suspect in custody, are you going to follow up on that angle, and explain how Francis Gerald Grady exemplifies the phenomenon you described? Have the producers at MSNBC booked you for tonight, so you can talk about Grady as part of the “anti-abortion movement” and the Republican “War on Women”? Or have you already booked your flight to Wisconsin, so you can give Newsweek and MSNBC exclusive coverage from the scene of the crime?

Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to get any of that kind of actual journalism from Michelle Goldberg or Lawrence O’Donnell or anybody else in the liberal media who was so eager to jump to a preordained conclusion about this incident, playing a primetime propaganda game of pin-the-tail-on-the-Republican.

Hell, no, they won’t follow up. Goldberg, O’Donnell, MSNBC, Newsweek — now that there are actual facts to report, these worthless lying scoundrels are going to drop this story and flush it down the Memory Hole as if it never happened. They ought to be indicted for fraud merely for calling themselves “journalists.”

UPDATE: While I was working on this post, Nick Martin of Talking Points Media reported:

Grand Chute Police Chief Greg Peterson said investigators in the case learned that Grady may have been involved in past protests at the office. The information was so far unconfirmed, Peterson said, but it is being looked at closely by the team of local and federal investigators handling the case.
“There was some indication that surfaced at some point that he has been involved in some of the demonstrations,” Peterson told TPM. But the chief described the information as coming from “someone who didn’t have direct knowledge,” so there was still more work to be done.

OK, so there is at least some secondhand hearsay pointing toward a connection between Grady and pro-life protests. I’ve made some phone calls, and intend to follow up on this angle. And it is with tremendous chagrin that I admit the necessity of hat-tipping . . . Charles Johnson.

Integrity: I got it. Like Paul F–king Anka, baby.

UPDATE II: Mark Leland of WLUK-TV reports that in his first court appearance today, Francis Grady offered to plead guilty and “also asked the judge if he knew how many babies were being killed at the clinic”:

According to the criminal complaint, Grady used a hammer to break a window of the clinic and then poured gasoline inside, lighting the room on fire.
After being arrested, the complaint states Grady admitted to officers, “I lit up the clinic.”
Grady appeared in court wearing a neck brace, and offering to plead guilty “today.”
The judge set a preliminary hearing for April 19.

UPDATE III: OK, there was no “bomb,” and this Grady character seems slightly deranged, judging from this account of his court hearing from Paul Srubas of the Green Bay Gazette:

Francis Grady, 50, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Sickel he planned to plead guilty, but Sickel ignored the statement and scheduled Grady for an April 19 preliminary hearing.
At one point, Grady interrupted him to ask, “Do you even care at all about the 1,000 babies that died screaming?”
Grady told his lawyer, public defender Tom Phillip he was fired for interrupting Sickel, prompting a woman from the back of the courtroom to call out, “Shut up, Frankie.”
“My sister told me to shut up,” Grady said to Phillip. . . .
Outside the courtroom, Grady told a Green Bay Press-Gazette photographer, “I just want to give one wink to my girlfriend.” When a reporter asked him why he had planted a bomb at the clinic, Grady corrected him, saying, “There was no bomb, it was gasoline.” He said he did it because “they’re killing babies there.”

I just got off the phone with the Grand Chute police chief. I’ll have more news about this case later.

 




 

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