Sarah Palin Demonstrates A Better Grasp Of Leadership Than Obama, Though, Admittedly, Barack Sets A Low Bar
Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 24 Comments
by Smitty
Fire Eric Holder, saith the Arctic Fox:
Holder conceded this week, “I have ultimate responsibility for what happens in the department.” He can prove it by resigning. And if he refuses to resign, then President Obama – with whom the bucks ultimately stop – can prove that he respects honesty, transparency, and accountability in his administration by firing Holder.
I stand with the members of Congress who are calling for Holder’s resignation. I stand with the family members of Brian Terry who are demanding transparency and accountability. Mr. President, where do you stand?
I’m uncertain whether this is enough. It may be time to consider the wholesale replacement of the entire Department of Justice. Simple dissolve the Department and re-constitute its legitimate functions with fresh faces.
Of course, now that That Woman has dared to raise her voice, #OccupyResoluteDesk can be expected to offer his best “neener neener neener, you’re not the boss of me” response.
‘Pray Real Hard’
Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 28 Comments
After Monday’s ordeal, I wrote:
If I were in a position to advise Cain at this moment, the only thing I could advise him is to pray.
Pray real hard.
It seemed hopeless at that point. And yet here we are on Friday, and Cain’s still very much alive. So my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw this recap of Wednesday’s debate by Grace Wyler at Business Insider:
Herman Cain’s presidential campaign had basically been left for dead when the 2012 Republican presidential candidates took the debate stage in Michigan Wednesday. Sexual harassment accusations had plagued his campaign for nearly two weeks, and his deny-to-the-death strategy was not going as planned.
But divine providence stepped in on Cain’s behalf tonight, in the form of Rick Perry. The Texas Governor’s spectacular meltdown on stage at the debate did what many in the media had believed impossible — divert the spotlight away from the Cain affair and on to the embarrassing shortcomings of a lower-tier candidate, as reporters gleefully hopped off the Cain Train to start writing Perry campaign obits.
“Divine providence”? I hesitate to claim that the Almighty would intervene in a Republican debate, but neither can I rule it out.
Anyway, theological speculation aside, Zilla of the Resistance called my attention to this video from Nerds4Cain:
BTW, some people are making are big deal out of this CBS News poll today, which shows Cain at 18% and Mitt and Newt at 15% each. These results are anomalous, most previous polls having shown Cain and Romney neck-and-neck above 20%, so what’s the deal here?
This poll was conducted by telephone from November 6-10, 2011 among 1,182 adults nationwide. 1,029 interviews were conducted with registered voters and 382 with voters who said they plan to vote in a Republican primary.
In other words, it’s a “random adults” poll and, at least in the CBS News story, you can’t tell whether most of the numbers cited involve GOP primary voters or “random adults.” We cannot therefore cite this one statistical outlier as evidence of a trend.
Patrick Murray Delivers The Best News I’ve Had All Week
Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 10 Comments
by Smitty
As hoped, Patrick Murray rides again, in the effort to Retire ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran. From his 10 November email announcement:
Today I’m announcing my candidacy for US Congress in the 8th Congressional District of Virginia. This decision to run for a second time took much soul-searching, thought and prayer. Campaigns are a crucible, but, just as with my military service, this is a matter of duty for me. If I thought our nation was on the right track, that we had leaders who were governing with the Constitution and our children in mind, that we were secure and prosperous, then I would happily pursue other goals.
Also:
In 2010 when I ran, I started at ground zero, freshly out of the Army with no campaign experience, no name recognition and only a handful of supporters. Well, I’m very proud of what we accomplished; over 72,000 people voted for me, we raised a substantial amount of money, and we had legions of energetic volunteers out knocking doors, making phone calls, putting out signs and stuffing envelopes. Now we have that firm foundation to stand upon, and redistricting should also help our side. Combine all of that with Party backing and a dynamic, professional campaign team with national experience and a solid record of winning difficult races in tough Districts and we are light years ahead of where we were last time.
Now, VA-8 has got to be among the toughest districts in the country. ‘Gentleman’ Jim is not only among the senior Democrat wealth redistributors, but the district itself is infested by a high concentration of senior federal bureaucrats who
- know on which side their bread is buttered, and
- know that the butter in question was re-distributed from a cow in mooing in a distant pasture.
Homo bureaucratus, while typically a beta (fe)male, and rarely given to anything that could be mistaken for personal courage, can be seen gathering in vast, neck-tie wearing herds for acts of passive aggression against the private sector. Like supporting Moran.
Thus, it is crucial for all right-thinking, traditional Americans to rally around candidates of the caliber of Murray. Even those living in Princess Nancy Pelosi’s, or Princess Barney Franks’s districts need to support viable candidates, and make the Democrat cretins feel the heat. This has the effect of tying up resources, and indirectly supporting American candidates in other districts.
Anybody can wax enthusiastic when the going is easy. However, the recovery from Progressivism is only in its early stages. So this blog rejoices in having a courageous leader like Murray to support. Hopefully we’ll do a better job of getting Ladd Ehlinger on scene to liven up matters this time around.
Update: linked at Zilla of the Resistance. Indeed, happy Veteran’s Day. Want to make a Vet happy? Help drive the Commies out of our government.
Update II: ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran, who famously doesn’t think military people are public servants still wants the military to think that he holds them in some esteem:
Today we recognize our nation’s veterans, the men and women who have given their time, risked their safety, and in some cases lost their lives in service to our country. Regardless of your position on past and present military operations, we owe a great deal of thanks to those willing to put on the uniform of the United States Military.
If you would really like to thank a veteran, ‘Gentleman’ Jim, what you can do is retire. About the only thing more important than separating you from levers of power, Mr. Moran, is ousting your buddy, #OccupyResoluteDesk.
Update III: via Insty, Kimberley Strassel has more good news about the Virginia political scene.
Update IV: Formal armistice with Paco, and concurrence on the Murray candidacy. My point on the fashion habits of homo bureaucratus seems to stand.
Update V: Now a Memeorandum thread.
Update V: Linked at The Lonely Conservative.
LIVE AT FIVE – 11.11.11
Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 7 Comments
— compiled by Wombat-socho
TOP NEWS
Rick Perry Struggles To Keep Campaign Alive
Observers think he’s done after brain fart at debate, but the candidate carries on regardless
Press Conference With Cain Accusers May Not Happen
Bielek, Kraushaar waiting for other two accusers to come forward
Paterno Looking At Lawyering Up
Nobody retained yet
Greece, Italy Seek A Solution From Technocrats
New Prime Ministers selected to replace Papandreaou, Berlusconi
POLITICS
Man Shot Dead Near Occupy Oakland Camp
Occupiers claim it was “neighborhood violence”
Panetta Orders Review Of Mishandled Dead
Romney, Obama Tied In Three Key States
Texas Faces Lawsuit After Nixing Confederate Plates
Senate Passes Portion Of Obama’s Jobs Bill
Newly Released Transcripts Show Bitter, Cynical Nixon In 1975
Obama’s Mideast Advisor, Dennis Ross, Retires
#OWS Protesters Disrupt Bachmann Speech
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
US Jobless Claims Fall, September Trade Gap Narrows
Futures Signal Rebound After Sharp Selloff
Asia Stocks Rise On US Jobless Data
Obama Punts Decision on Keystone XL Pipeline Until After 2012 Election
Japan’s Exit From Slump May Be Short-Lived
Facebook Retreats On Privacy
Valve’s Steam Forums Hacked; Not Clear If Credit Card Numbers Stolen
More Shoppers Drawn To Smaller, Cheaper Kindle Fire Than iPad
Amazon Acquires Speech-to-Text Startup Yap
SPORTS
Penn State’s McQueary Won’t Coach Against Nebraska
Multiple threats made against interim coach
Aircraft Carrier Embarks On Unique Mission As Basketball Arena
Kyle Busch To Finish Sprint Cup Season Without Main Sponsor
NBA, Union Conclude Talks; Still No Deal
Blackhawks Halt Three-Game Skid With Win Over Blue Jackets
For UCLA, Everything Old Is New Again
NFLPA Offers Proposal For HGH Testing
Kidnapped Nationals Catcher Wilson Ramos Still Alive, Police Say
FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Ashton Kutcher Apologizes For Tweets
Oops, Paterno did WHAT?
Billy Crystal Set As New Host For Oscars
Ricky Gervais Makes Two For One Offer: “I’ll Host The Oscars AND The Globes!”
Adam Sandler: “There’s No Reason For Me To Host The Oscars”
Howard Stern In Talks With “America’s Got Talent”
Pregnant Reality TV Star Claims Mel Gibson Is Her Baby Daddy
Olsen Twins Beat Middleton Sisters As Vogue’s Most Stylish
FOREIGNERS
US Soldier Convicted Of Murdering Afghans, Sentenced To Life
Ayatollah Khamenei Denounces UN Nuclear Report
Turkey: Rioting Follows Quake
Syrian Violence Kills Dozens More; Arab League To Meet
South Africa’s ANC Kicks Out Malema For Five Years
Black Rhino Goes Extinct In West Africa (Video)
President Sirleaf Holds Clear Lead In Liberia Election
BLOGS & STUFF
Via Meadia: School Spirit In Pennsylvania
John Scalzi: Omelas State University
OWS Exposed: Death #5 – Man Shot In Vermont
Allahpundit: Hard-hitting WaPo Coverage
The Lonely Conservative: Obama Tables Keystone XL Approval Until After Election
Sarah Palin: Fire Eric Holder
Gateway Pundit: Occupy Atlanta’s Base Tests Positive For Drug-Resistant TB
Jonah Goldberg: The Perilous Perry Pattern
Fire Andrea Mitchell: citizen Journalist Assaulted by Occupy San Diego Camper
SOTD: Phone Call From The Moon
‘A Million Miles an Hour’: Interview With Herman Cain Campaign Chief of Staff
Posted on | November 10, 2011 | 74 Comments
In a brief telephone interview Thursday night, Herman Cain presidential campaign chief of staff Mark Block discussed the campaign’s strategy, fund-raising and recent news developments. Block contacted me after I’d written a post about the many criticisms leveled at the campaign by conservatives, including bloggers who demanded that Block be fired from the campaign. My recording of the interview began after Block had told me he was taking a cigarette break. — RSM
Robert Stacy McCain: Hang on, hang on a second. I’ve got to step outside myself and have a smoke.
Mark Block: Smokers unite!
RSM: What happened was, I saw all the bloggers calling for your lynching and I said, look, you know, I can bitch about this campaign from a much more informed perspective than anybody else could ever bitch about this campaign. You know what I’m saying?
BLOCK: Yep.
RSM: And so these amateurs jumping in on ‘Oh, what’s wrong with the Cain campaign’ kind of pissed me off. And so I said, ‘OK, I’ll uncork one and when it’s all said and done, guess what? They just raised $9 million, they’re on top of the polls, nobody ever thought they’d ever be there — you want to recalibrate your criticism?’
BLOCK: You know, Stacy, and I’m not blowing smoke up your ass –- no pun intended — but you’re one of the few that get that this is a non-traditional campaign.
Does Block make mistakes? Of course! You know, one of the reasons is we don’t have an army of researchers and analysts telling us what we can and cannot say and how to say it, OK? I don’t have a whole slew of lawyers that I go to and say, ‘You know what, because I say this thing about this kid that works for Politico and his mother, double-check the facts.’ I get handed a piece of paper and it says that he works at Politico, they broke the story, same last name of this woman, connect the dots — I was wrong! I admitted I was wrong, all right?
Now, with all of those faults, though, Stacy, we run a million miles an hour. And you know what? We make mistakes. But they can’t catch us.
RSM: Well, you know, I defended the ‘Blame Perry’ move as strategic genius. And whether or not it was intentional or not, you know, even your mistakes help you.
BLOCK: No, no — I will not back off of the Perry thing, Stacy. I will say that I was wrong on the kid that worked for Politico, because we didn’t have our facts straight. I’m not backing off on the Perry thing. I backed off on the guy [consultant Curt Anderson], because he came out and said that it wasn’t him. But I’m still not backing off that the pot wasn’t stirred by the Perry folks.
RSM: Well, between you and me and the fencepost [discussion involving confidential sources, redacted] and we’ll never know where this shit came from, except that my hunch from the get-go was Perry. But if it was the Obama people, so what? If it was Romney, so what? You know, that doesn’t matter, really.
BLOCK: Yeah, you know what? It’ll probably be like Deep Throat. We probably won’t know for 25 years where the whole Politico thing came from.
RSM: Yeah. Well, now, $9.4 million [fundraising since Oct. 1] is the number I just heard?
BLOCK: It was over $9 million.
RSM: In 40 days?
BLOCK: Yep.
RSM: Which is $225,000 a day.
BLOCK: It doesn’t take a simple regression analysis to figure that one out, does it?
RSM: No. So, what’s your burn rate? Is it still low? I mean, are you piling this money up?
BLOCK: Yep. . . . This is something that you got, that the other ones didn’t get. We got a lot of criticism from you and others, early on — really, going into the Florida straw poll –because we didn’t have a massive staff in every state and we didn’t have a massive staff in Atlanta. And we didn’t have this and we didn’t have that and we didn’t have all this other stuff. Right?
RSM: Right.
BLOCK: Because we didn’t want to burn that cash. So we come out of the Florida straw poll with extremely low fixed costs. If I’m talking like a businessman, it’s because he runs it like a business. So our burn rate is small, compared to all of the other campaigns, because we don’t have a lot of fixed overhead. So now, as the cash comes in, right, I don’t have a lot of bills to pay, Stacy.
RSM: OK. So let me ask you something — and someone had told me about this — is that you guys sent [field director] Jamie Brazil down to Florida before that straw poll to reach out to people and, like the list of [Republican] contacts in the state would have cost $7,000, and y’all didn’t spend the $7,000, and he did it all on his own. Is that true?
BLOCK: That’s true, but you gotta remember, Stacy, how many dozens of trips that Mr. Cain made into Florida prior to the Florida straw poll and all the Tea Party groups that he spoke at their rallies, OK? We had built an infrastructure down there. When you and I were out in Maryland [in July] in the driveway of, I can’t even remember whose house it was, and I said, ‘Stacy, we built these infrastructures in these states.’
RSM: Yep.
BLOCK: Through the Tea Party movement. I remember going into, for God’s sake, Fargo, North Dakota, in February or March, freezing my butt off, and the first people we met was the Tea Party groups, the 9/12-ers, the grassroots organizations. This is why I say that we’re running a million miles an hour — they can’t catch us, Stacy, ‘cause you can’t build those infrastructures overnight.
RSM: Yeah, well, speaking of building things overnight, I got a little note back from a friend who says y’all may be rolling out your new Web site [Friday].
BLOCK: Yeah.
RSM: Which was my big beef.
BLOCK: Yeah.
RSM: So, you’re re-launching the site tomorrow with a new design?
BLOCK: Yes, and you know, I have been so busy the last 10 days that I’m 99.9 percent sure that we’re rolling it out tomorrow, because we’re rolling it out on Veteran’s Day — tomorrow’s Veteran’s Day — but I haven’t had even a chance to call the developers and say, ‘What time are you flipping the switch?’
RSM: Yeah.
BLOCK: And I’ll try to do that tonight and send you a text message.
* * * * * *
UPDATE: Linked by Rio Norte Line, Matt Lewis, Hot Air Headlines, and by Bryan Preston at PJ Tatler. Now a Memeorandum thread.
Everybody seems so judgmental today, eh? People don’t pay me to teach campaign ethics. They pay me to get the story. I’m like the sportswriter in the press box. And like Al Davis said, “Just win, baby.”
Crowder: ‘They Hate Capitalism. But They Love Weed‘
Posted on | November 10, 2011 | 13 Comments
by Smitty
Steven Crowder is slightly more serious in his Fox News contributor role. Here, he is trying to point out that opposition to Wall Street fat cats is a point of common ground between Tea Parties and #OWS.
The fact Crowder brings up about union contributions over time is new to me. Have we hated unions enough? Again, private sector unions are no more, or less, evil than corporations, with the difference being that unions don’t exactly produce anything.
Tell Me Something I Don’t Know
Posted on | November 10, 2011 | 60 Comments
For the past several days, in conversation after conversation, I’ve listened while friends told me what’s wrong with the Herman Cain campaign. Some of these friends are enthusiastic Cain supporters, some are not. And as I told several people who criticized the campaign’s handling of the sexual harassment allegations, “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. Any 24-year-old with a semester of Leadership Institute training could do a better job than they’ve been doing.”
Look, I’m no campaign strategist. But you don’t have to be a campaign strategist to see that, for example, HermanCain.com is without question The World’s Suckiest Campaign Web Site.
Just in terms of doing my job I noticed this months ago, because when you click the “Newsroom” tab on the site, a reporter might expect to find an archive of press releases. What you find instead is some kind of 1996-era “frames” format with out-of-date news articles about the campaign — which doesn’t even include links to the original articles.
OK, so click the “Press Resources” link at HermanCain.com and we find — wait for it — a form you can fill out and request information.
Fill it out. Maybe they’ll get back to you.
If I were the manager of a campaign paying good money for a Web site and somebody provided me with a useless piece of crap like HermanCain.com, either I’d be in jail for attempted murder or else he’d be in jail under indictment for fraud and theft by deception.
There is no excuse for this. I could pick up my cell-phone this very minute and, just from the numbers in my speed-dail, give you the names of six professionals who could design a better Web site than HermanCain.com. Five months ago, Steve Foley of Citizens4Cain published an open letter to the Cain campaign telling them what a wreck their Web site is and . . . no response.
Nobody home. Nobody cares. Crickets chirping.
When the campaign has failed to fix a blindingly obvious and basic problem like that, months after they’ve been told about the problem, it does not inspire confidence. And this kind of problem — which can be seen by anybody who cares to look — is replicated throughout the Cain campaign’s operations.
People with years of experience in the campaign business keep talking my ears off, telling me stuff the Cain campaign is doing wrong, and I don’t know what to tell them, except that they’re telling me the umpteenth version of the same story I’ve been hearing from everybody else. If I had any influence at all with the campaign, they’d have long ago re-hired Dan Tripp and given him two orders: Kick ass and take names. They’re not listening to me, they’re not listening to Steve Foley, they’re not listening to anybody, and so all I can do is to do my job — I’m a journalist, not a campaign strategist — and try not to worry about it.
The reason I wrote that 500-word rant is because today I noticed bloggers demanding that Herman Cain fire his chief of staff Mark Block:
Herman Cain’s Worst Enemy
— Michelle Malkin
Dear Herman Cain
— Erick Erickson
Cain campaign: We’re sticking with Mark Block
— Ed Morrissey
In Erickson’s post, he writes:
Herman, you said you’d surround yourself with the best people and you’ve surrounded yourself with Class A failures. The problems you are facing are problems of campaign staffing. You’ve failed to live up to your own standard of hiring the best people.
Which is pretty damned categorical, and which might have more credibility if Erickson’s buddies — “the best people” — weren’t the guys piloting the hopelessly doomed Rick Perry campaign.
Malkin’s complaint, basically, is that Mark Block is a lying scumbag. Having spent a good deal of time covering Republican campaigns, however, I’m willing to attest that “lying scumbag” and “GOP political operative” are pretty much synonymous. The key thing is to hire effective lying scumbags, and the “Blame Rick Perry” move was pure genius. For two or three days, everybody was screaming bloody murder about Block trying to pin the blame on Curt Anderson, which bought Team Herman enough time to come up with a better story.
Guess what? It worked.
But if you’re a conservative who wants to get quoted in the mainstream media this week, hurry up and denounce Mark Block:
Cain chief of staff under fire
Conservative pundits and former Cain staffers are calling for the resignation of Herman Cain’s chief of staff, who they say has damaged the GOP candidate’s credibility.
The calls for Mark Block to resign come as Cain’s campaign deals with sexual harassment allegations that threaten to ruin his candidacy. . . .
“Mark Block has to go,” prominent conservative blogger Ed Morrisey of Hot Air wrote Wednesday morning. “If he’s not gone by tomorrow, no one will take this campaign seriously again — nor should they.”
No expertise is required to identify and criticize the Cain campaign’s errors. Everybody with two eyes and a brain can see it. And yet . . .
Cain’s fundraising surges past $9 million
Herman Cain has raised more than $9 million since Oct. 1, his campaign announced Thursday, more than doubling his cash haul for 2012.
More than $2 million of that total was donated within the last 10 days, as Cain battled mounting allegations of sexual harassment from his time as president of the National Restaurant Association.
Cain only raised $4.7 million from May through Sept. 30, although it was not until his Sept. 24 victory in the Florida straw poll that the candidate began to rise in Republican polls. The campaign has now raised a total of $14.1 million. . . .
For the past 40 days, while the Cain campaign has broken every single maxim of Political Communications 101, they’ve been raising money at the pace of $225,000 a day. If that’s failure, it’s the kind of failure many campaign operatives would kill to have.
Despite everything, Herman Cain is No. 1 in the polls.
And next time I see Mark Block, I expect him to buy me a beer for calling him an “effective lying scumbag.”
Obviously, it was intended as a compliment.
UPDATE: Someone sent me this:
Free “Beat Obama With A Cain” Ringtone
From your phone:
1. Dial 90210
2. In the text box type in beat Obama.
3. Click Send
4. You’ll need a smart phone and will be sent a link to which they click on and a screen will appear with a choice to download an mp4 or an mp3.
Don’t have a “smart phone,” so I haven’t had a chance to try this. Let me know how it works.
UPDATE II: The proverbial “sources close to the campaign” tell me they’re preparing to roll out a new campaign Web site. Let’s hope it has an archive of press releases, with permalinks.
It’s Morning in Vanuatu Again
Posted on | November 10, 2011 | 23 Comments
Is Perry Toast?
— New York Times
PERRY DEBATE DISASTER: This Is The Moment
That Officially Killed His Campaign — For Good
— Business Insider
Ford. Quayle. Stockdale. Now, Poor Rick Perry
— The Atlantic
Cain escapes serious damage
in Republican debate
— Reuters
Kraushaar won’t do news conference
without other accusers
— CNN
Investigator: Herman Cain
innocent of sexual advances
— WGCL-TV, CBS Atlanta
82 Reasons to Visit Vanuatu
— Sydney Morning Herald
Mrs. Other McCain and I had a . . . discussion about the budget this morning. I’m sitting here looking at the receipt for the rental car I recently returned to Enterprise: $854.46.
Recall that I rented the car to attend the Oct. 29 “Turning the Tides” conference in Annapolis, expecting to return it afterwards. But then Politico broke the sexual harassment story on Oct. 30, which made Herman Cain’s Oct. 31 appearance at the National Press Club a major event I couldn’t miss, so I kept the car to go cover that. By Tuesday, when the Cain “scandal” reached crisis stage, I had to go to the American Spectator gala, after which it was only two days until the start of the Americans for Prosperity “Defending the American Dream” Summit, and switching to the weekly rate made sense. So then I went down to D.C. and found myself unexpectedly in the middle of the Occupy DC riot. By the time I finally returned the car, I’d had it for 11 days and . . . $854.46.
My transportation situation has been a cause of continuous stress, not to mention a disastrous financial drain, ever since that damned deer totalled the KIA last September. My 19-year-old son James has replaced the busted radiator, straightened the frame and gotten the basic body work done, but the car (on which we’re still making payments, of course) remains parked and awaiting the final repairs necessary to pass Maryland inspection, at which point we’ll have to pay to get the tags, insurance, etc.
James is now in his first semester of college, working when he’s not studying and, in whatever spare moments he has, wrapped up in the slender arms of his lovely brunette girlfriend, Danielle. Getting the KIA roadworthy again is therefore not likely to happen anytime soon, and I blame myself, if only because my sons inherited the legendary animal magnetism. Mea culpa.
However, there is a foreign policy debate Saturday in Spartanburg, S.C., and my friend Ali Akbar has arranged for me to get media credentials, so now I’m planning to rent another car tomorrow and drive down there: 475 miles one-way, a 950-mile round trip, 16 hours on the road and I hope, in consideration of this extraordinary effort, maybe my good friends with the Cain campaign will grant me something in the way of access to the candidate. Read more



