House Calls Obama’s Bluff, Passes Payroll Tax Cut Extension He Promised to Veto

Posted on Comments

However it turns out, score this a win for Boehner:

Defying a veto threat from President Obama, the House on Tuesday passed a bill extending a cut in Social Security payroll taxes for 160 million Americans for another year. But the Democratic majority in the Senate vowed to reject the measure because of objections to other provisions, including one to speed construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Obama has demagogued the hell out of this issue, so now the House has passed it — with a tasty poison pill the enviros will hate — and pitches it over to the Senate, where Harry Reid’s Democrat majority can’t even manage to pass a budget. Let Harry deal with it, and if Harry can’t get a bill to Obama’s desk, the expiration of the tax cut is Harry’s fault. And if something does manage to get out of a bicameral reconciliation process, double-dog dare Obama to veto it.

Burning Mosques, Rabbi Hammerman?

Posted on Comments

by Smitty via Ace

I realize this is hyperbole, sut still:

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.

Nice cheap shot, man. Based upon what evidence have you ever seen Christians engage in that sort of mayhem? Westboro Baptist Church does some tasteless picketing. That one goofball in Florida with a bracket ‘stache burned a Qur’an.
And then this:

Unlike some other blue-staters, I do not fear people of faith. I fear people of certainty. The worldwide struggle going on right now is not between good and evil, but between certainty and doubt.

Well, evil sure has you in the hip pocket then, doesn’t it, Rabbi? May the Lord have mercy on you.

Santorum Surge: New Poll Shows Gains in Iowa, Closing in on Perry, Bachmann

Posted on Comments

The Public Policy Polling article about their latest Iowa survey doesn’t even mention Rick Santorum — instead focusing on the closing gap between Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul — but when you look closer at the numbers, something else becomes apparent:

CANDIDATE ……… Dec. 3-5 … Dec. 11-13
Newt Gingrich ………………. 27% ……. 22%
Ron Paul ……………………… 18% ……. 21%
Mitt Romney ……………….. 16% ……. 16%
Michele Bachmann ……….. 13% ……. 11%
Rick Perry ……………………  9% …….  9%
Rick Santorum ……………..  6% …….  8%
Jon Huntsman ……………..  4% …….  5%
Gary Johnson ………………  1% …….  1%

Gingrich and Bachmann have lost support in the past week, Romney and Perry are flat, and Paul and Santorum have gained ground. Santorum’s 2-point gain — 6% to 8% — may not seem like much, but consider that Perry has piled on $1 million in TV ads without any apparent effect, while Santorum is neck-and-neck without spending a dime on TV.

If the current trend continues another week, Santorum will be in fourth place, ahead of both Perry and Bachmann. And guess what?

RICK SANTORUM
‘NO SURRENDER’
MONEY BOMB

 

RECENTLY:

#OWS: Obama’s Willing Scum
UPDATE: Occupiers Wreck Stolen Truck En Route to Portland Demonstration

Posted on Comments

The puzzle pieces begin to form a picture:

Rep. Issa asks Obama official why illegal
camping of Occupy DC was permitted
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Tuesday announced he wants answers on whether “political judgments played a role” in allowing Occupy D.C. protesters to remain camped in Northwest Washington.
Issa, chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter dated Monday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar requesting any communication between the Department of Interior and the White House regarding the Occupy D.C. protests. . . .
Occupy DC protesters, an outgrowth of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement that began in Manhattan, have been camping in McPherson Square, in Northwest Washington, for more than two months. The National Park Service (NPS), an agency of the DOI, prohibits camping in the square, but allows 24-hour protests. Issa is seeking answers on the apparent discrepancy.
“The protesters camping in McPherson Square appear to be in violation of the law and the NPS could have legally required them to stop and remove their tents,” Issa wrote in the letter. “The NPS has an obligation to the American people to explain the decisions that were made regarding the Occupy D.C. protesters in McPherson Square.”

Yeah, kinda suspicious, isn’t it? Ace of Spades has a roundup of other Occupy news today, including “Parents for Occupy Wall Street” using kids as proxies in their cop-hating crusade. And Ace references — but gives the wrong URL — for this video:

UPDATE: The Portland Occupiers were courageously supported by delegates from the Coalition of Incompetent Car Thieves:

Also Monday morning, some Occupy Portland protesters on the way to the port demonstration were involved in a crash in a stolen truck, police said.
The crash occurred on Marine Drive at the I-5 overpass.
Officers arrested Levi B. Feltkamp, 30, for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. Police said the truck he was driving had been stolen from Forest Grove.
“Feltkamp and the occupants of the stolen truck all indicated they were on their way to the Occupy demonstration,” King said.

They! Are! The 99 Percent!

UPDATE II: Occupiers can’t get no love from Longshoremen:

To union members who missed a day’s worth of wages, the shut down appears to have caused more harm than good, which apparently prompted the ILWU in Portland to ask the #Occupiers to leave last night.

Guys with jobs vs. punks with protests signs.

Cuts Like a Knife

Posted on Comments

But it feels so right:

Romney’s role: The Hillary Clinton of 2012?
— Politico

That kind of comparison slices Mitt like cold cuts and, while we’re at it, consider the case of an amateur online oppo-researcher:

The damage wreaked by Kaczynski’s work points to an irony of politics in the Internet age. Technological advances have made political campaigns increasingly sophisticated in their methods, with “microtargeted” online ads and text-messaged announcements of ­running-mate selections. But those same advances have made it possible for such sophisticated plans to be easily upended. That’s because, thanks to the Internet, opposition research—long considered a dark art practiced only by hardened political operatives—can now be done, and done effectively, by amateurs.

There are reasons that this year has been such an up-and-down cycle: As soon as someone emerges as a front-runner, that candidate becomes the focus of a million pairs of eyes and, so far at least, none has been able to withstand such scrutiny.

Twitter Trolls and the Abuse of Anonymity

Posted on Comments


“Bagehot99” signifies his arrogance by his choice of pseudonyms, referencing the 19th-century economist Walter Bagehot — as if.

Exactly how my name came to his attention, I’m not sure. He had been carrying on a Twitter flame-war of sorts with Dan, among others, and decided he’s so much smarter than either of us that he should denounce us — to his hundred or so Twitter followers — as “middlebrow, self-regarding bloggers.” He has also fired off noxious messages aimed at Jeff Goldstein and others.

Look: I have friends who blog under pseudonyms, but they well know the risks involved in using a pseudonym to attack others. It is one thing, in 21st-century political discourse, to employ a pseudonym as an online cloak to insulate one’s real-life existence against hassles that might attach themselves to one’s Internet persona. Ace of Spades is an educated man with professional credentials and ambitions beyond blogging and politics, and the insulation of his pseudonym permits him to deploy his madcap humor without worrying that this will taint the career prospects of the mild-mannered real-life Ewok-looking fellow he is.

What “Bagehot99” is doing on Twitter is something utterly different. He’s a troll, stalking people with whom he disagrees and targeting them with put-downs — a purely negative and destructive abuse of Twitter, and one he would be well-advised to abandon.

Putting down people as “silly little wankers who can’t sustain a coherent argument“? Telling them they are “Intoxicated by your own ordinary intellects“? This kind of high-handed treatment naturally inspires the objects of your attack to ask, “Who is this pompous asshole?”

“Bagehot99” ought to be careful about his choice of enemies, and he also ought to be careful about disclosing biographical data:

Feel for me, I’m stuck in Missouri….for the last 13 years. I miss London.

I’ve seen Dan Riehl sleuth out the real-world identities of people based on less information than that: How many alumni of the London School of Economics (just a guess there) currently reside in Missouri? How many of them moved to Missouri circa 1998? How many of them are ardent soccer fans and Republicans with Tea Party leanings?

Dan Riehl may be just a “middlebrow” blogger, but if he ever decides an anonymous troll is worth the time and effort necessary to expose him, things have a way of getting ugly pretty quick, as Jesse Griffin learned to his everlasting chagrin.

UPDATE: Mr. Troll hasn’t been too tidy online:

Martin H (@Bagehot99). Dual nationality (Brit/US) living in the US, Saint Louis to be exact.

And also this:

bagehot99
An Englishman in, errr, St. Louis
Saint Louis, MO
I love to write; I used to blog extensively on a now-defunct political website. I have written humor/satire pieces, news pieces, general interest stuff, technical writing, contract drafting, business communications. I am well-known in my field as an authority on Integrated Project Delivery means and methods, and can write compelling presentations, resumes, and other assignments based upon creative and articulate use of the written word.

I’ve got lots of readers and friends in Missouri, and if any of them know a pompous British asshole named “Martin H.,” our Twitter troll buddy might have cause to regret his obnoxiousness.

UPDATE II: Did I say “Republican with Tea Party leanings”? No, actually, he’s a Libertarian who ran for a state legislative seat in 2010 and got 260 votes. Better luck next time, Martin.

Santorum: The ‘Least Worst’ Candidate?

Posted on Comments

Lisa Graas makes an interesting argument about the way voters are manipulated with news about polling. Read the headline and first two paragraph of a NewsMax article Monday:

Rasmussen Poll: Gingrich, Romney
Strongest to Beat Obama
Voters are evenly divided over whether Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney would provide President Barack Obama with the strongest GOP challenge next November, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll.
But twice as many Republican voters feel that the former House speaker would have a better chance of beating Obama in the race for the White House. . . .

My own criticism of such a story is this: It is absurd to allow your vote in a primary to be influenced by poll data about “electability” in surveys conducted many months in advance of the election. Such polls will almost always favor the candidate with the biggest “name ID” and, in this year’s Flavor-of-the-Month GOP campaign, we’ve seen front-runners rise and fall. For a few weeks in late August and early September, Rick Perry’s numbers were very encouraging and now — as the Iowa caucuses approach — Perry looks like an also-ran.

Campaigns matter. Hypothetical poll match-ups between candidates cannot predict the events of a campaign, and those unforeseen events will ultimately matter more than the shallow perceptions reflected in polls done in advance of an actual campaign.

That’s my general criticism of reporting polls as facts, as if today’s barometer of public opinion reflected a solid and permanent reality.

Lisa Graas, however, finds something surprising buried deep in that NewsMax article:

Voters were also asked which of the seven leading GOP candidates would do worst against Obama. In that poll, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann was considered the weakest candidate by 30 percent of respondents, scoring more than double over the next-worst, Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Women gave Bachmann, the only female in the race, an even lower rating than men did. Romney at 4 percent and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum at 7 percent were considered the least-worst candidates.

Of course, Lisa has other arguments in favor of Santorum, but it is interesting to discover — in the seventh paragraph of this article — that Santorum’s low-budget candidacy rivals a big-money contender like Romney in what might be a crucial factor for those GOP voters who place a premium on “electability.”