A Democrat Admits the Truth

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When a Democrat says something that’s actually true, that’s what we call “news,” and Rep. Pete Stark calls the debt-ceiling debate a “charade.”

“Charade,” “kabuki dance” — to-may-to, to-mah-to — Obama and Harry Reid are putting on a political pageant that doesn’t deceive anyone with enough brains to see what’s really going on.

Andy at AOSHQ calls Obama The Greatest Orator Ever™ — which is what we call a “joke.”

The way Obama repeated the same stale talking points — “balanced approach,” “millionaires and billionaires,” etc. — struck Charles Krauthammer as the height of cynicism:


LIVE AT FIVE – 07.26.11

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— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Obama And Boehner Go To The People

Speaker John Boehner

President natters in prime time without a plan

Norway Keeping Calm And Carrying On After Breivik Attack
He sought to spark a revolution but the nation remains phlegmatic


UN Races To Supply Food To Somalian Famine Victims
Airlift aiming to help 175,000 in remote zones



POLITICS
Facing Ethics Probe, Wu Suggests He May Resign

Congressman David Wu in saner times, addressing a town hall meeting

Insists he did nothing illegal, but support evaporating

Obama Seeks Rubes In Hispanic Community, Dangles Immigration Carrot



ABC Poll Claims Voters Blame GOP, Obama Equally For Unemployment

Governor Brown Pushes Twelve-Gigawatt Clean Power Goal, Vague On Details

Lawsuit Challenges NY Gay Marriage Law

Jury Selection Begins In Polygamist’s Statutory Rape Trial

ACLU Goes Fishing For Christie, Ailes Communications



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Shares Rise On Solid Earnings
Deadlocked Debt talks Weigh On Wall Street
Wall Street Makes Fallback Plans For Debt
Central Bank Of India Hikes Interest Rates To Cool Inflation
Airlines Balk At Passing “Tax Holiday” On To Passengers
Netflix Puts Streaming Into Overdrive As DVD Biz Peaks
Losing Ground, Blackberry Resets
Crackdown On Fake Apple Stores Begins In PRC
Apple’s New App Store Policies Zap Third-Party Store Links



SPORTS
Game On: NFL, Players Agree To New Deal

NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

Players get smaller percentage of revenue, but actual compensation increases

Mariners Extend Losing Streak To 16 In 10-3 Loss To Yankees




Ethier’s Dinger Helps Lift Dodgers Past Rockies, 8-5

NFL’s Free Agent Frenzy: A Thousand Deals to Be Done

Royals Play Small Ball To Beat Sox In 14th, 3-1

Wings’ Draper To Announce Retirement Today

Rangers Rout Twins. 20-6

Walden Blows Another Save As Angels Fall To Tribe 3-2

What Have They Done With Bryce Harper?



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Amy Winehouse Cause Of Death Not Disclosed After Autopsy

The late Amy Winehouse

Private funeral to be held later today

Lindsay Lohan: I Wasn’t Drinking And I Wasn’t Drunk

Kristin Cavallari “Blindsided” By Broken Engagement

Leighton Meester Sues Her Mother Over Misused Money

Jennifer Lopez “Very Happy” Celebrating Birthday In Miami

Jesse James, Kat Von D Split

Half-Pretty Attention Whore Ejected From Comic-Con For Half-Dressing To Show It


“Community” Scoop: John Goodman Registers As Greendale’s Newest Foe

Neil Burger From “limitless” On Board New Bonnie & Clyde Movie

It’s A Boy For Lauryn Hill!



FOREIGNERS
Horn Of Africa Aid Caravan Too Late, Again
UN Says Loyalist Sector Of Libya Facing Shortages
Clashes In Helmand Province Kill 22 Jihadis, 2 Police
PRC Launches Safety Campaign After Deadly Train Crash
US, ROK Stand Firm Against Norks: No Change In No-Nukes Policy
Vatican Begins Process To Expel Troublesome Priest; Publicly Recalls Nuncio From Ireland
Syria Permits Opposition Parties On Restrictive Terms



BLOGS & STUFF
National Review: A New Deficit Plan – House GOP Optimistic But Wary
Weekly Standard: Allen West Gives Boehner Tea Party Boost
JustOneMinute: What If They Gave A Crisis And Nobody Came?
Keith Hennessey: President Obama Says No To A Bipartisan Debt Limit Plan
And So It Goes In Shreveport: Class Warfare, Slavery References, Damn The Corporate Jets — It’s Another Obama Speech! #Drink!!
Israel Matzav: If Breivik Is “Islamophobic”, Why Did He Target Blonde, Blue-eyed Norwegians?
Atlas Shrugs: Media Assassins
Radio Equalizer: Nordic Blame Game
Lonely Conservative: The Latest In The Debt Ceiling Debacle
Moe Lane: Good Lord, A Readable ThinkProgress Article
Don Surber: Blowhard Of The Day
Legal Insurrection: How Badly Does Obama Want To Get Reelected?
PJ Tatler: ATF, FBI Forced Gun Stores To Sell To Felons


SOTD: Destroy Everything You Touch

Obama’s Foreign Policy Is About as Successful as Obama’s Domestic Policy

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Which is to say, it’s a pathetic joke:

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ pronouncement today that Libya is a “stalemate” would, I think, have gotten a bit more attention but for the debt debate.

We recently passed the four-month anniversary of “Operation Odyssey Dawn,” the U.S.-led air assault on Moammar Qaddafi’s regime. Now, 128 days later, we’ve got a “stalemate.”

Just as they don’t teach economics at Harvard Law, I guess they don’t teach military history there, either. So we pissed away hundreds of billions in neo-Keynesian “stimulus” spending without creating a recovery, and now we’ve wasted hundreds of millions in bombs and missiles without defeating the enemy — who, it’s worth pointing out, posed no threat to the U.S. or its allies.

You know who’s smiling now? Jimmy Carter.

Because Jimmy’s well on his way to becoming the second-worst president in American history.

UPDATE: Pat Austin at So It Goes in Shreveport links me in discussing Obama’s Very Crappy Speech — thanks — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II: Fred Thompson on Twitter:


More Honest and Interesting Than Whatever Obama’s Gonna Say on TV

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Because I refuse to watch Obama’s phony primetime TV speech, and figure you don’t want to watch it either, here’s a three-minute video press release about a proposed independent conservative film:

They’re trying to raise $130,000 to turn that into a movie, so go check ’em out and see what you think. Whatever you do, don’t watch Obama’s speech because it will only make you angry.

Spooky Kabuki: More Free Primetime TV for the Summer Bummer Obama Drama

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The World’s Least Plausible Reality Show continues:

Mr Obama will address the nation tonight at 9pm Eastern Time and U.S. leaders are trying to reassure jittery investors as Wall Street markets closed down and global indexes wobbled today.

Jeebus, this guy doesn’t know when to quit, does he?

On the bright side, Black Monday was merely dark gray. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was only off 88 points.

You know why the markets aren’t in complete panic over Obama’s reckless debt-ceiling brinksmanship? Because they don’t take it any more seriously than I do. It’s so transparently a phony political kabuki dance — a show-bizzy publicity stunt whereby Obama depicts himself as the Only Adult in the Room — that investors simply can’t believe anyone could be that stupid.

So once again, Obama will interrupt whatever it was that TV viewers had planned to watch in the prime 9 p.m. slot, so that he can recycle his irreponsible partisan rhetoric about what a reponsible non-partisan he is. And then there is the comic-villain clown of this absurd melodrama:

Reid: I have an exciting new
compromise debt deal for
you radical right-wing extremists

Excuse me while I check the schedule . . . yeah, at 8 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies will be showing I Accuse! (1958), the true story of Emile Zola’s defense of Alfred Dreyfus.

Can’t miss that. At least it’s a true story.

Strained Althouse Logic: Bipartisan Appeal Equals Presidential Disqualifier?

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by Smitty

Kind of a head-scratcher here (emphasis original).

. . .Sarah Palin’s rise to power in Alaska and her excellent achievements and immense popularity as governor. The problem is that all of this happened in the context of boldly and bravely challenging the corrupt Republican establishment. This made her very popular with Democrats in Alaska. She worked in a bipartisan way, mainly to extract money from oil and gas resources in Alaska, and that was popular with everyone, pushing her ratings above 80% in Alaska. She was raking in money for Alaskans and challenging the big corporations (and their inside dealings). What’s not for Democrats to like?

But once McCain brought her in as the vice presidential nominee and she launched into ripping up Barack Obama, her ratings plummeted in Alaska. And non-Alaskans never got up to speed about the things that had made her popular in Alaska.

And then she concludes:

Democrats were central to Sarah Palin’s greatness: That is the argument in the movie. If that is true, there is no greatness upon which to build a presidential bid.

As with the debt ceiling kerfuffle, the real problem besetting Governor Palin is boredom: we know the 02 August Line of Death couldn’t be less meaningful if had been decided by the Qaddafi One himself; also, the pregnant pause we all sort of anticipate will give birth to a Presidential run seems to be going on too long.
However, if and when Governor Palin decides to enter the race, then the question becomes whether the propaganda media has successfully poisoned the well to the point where she gains no significant traction. Yet, if The Undefeated’s thesis is valid, and she has the charisma to draw in significant Democrat support, then she should, well, draw significant Democrat support.
By the time the 02 August debt kerfuffle reaches its next stage of idiocy, making the anti-DC case shouldn’t be terribly hard.

Speaking of Sarah, via the FaceBook page above:

Victory Film Group and ARC Entertainment, the distributor of “The Undefeated,” the film about Gov. Sarah Palin’s rise from obscurity to national prominence, jointly announced today that beginning on September 1st the film will be available to 75 million homes via Video on Demand and Pay-Per-View access through national and regional cable and satellite operators. The DVD will launch on October 4th and will be available at traditional and online retailers nationwide. ARC is estimating its initial unit shipment to be approximately 250,000 units. A “Special Edition” DVD will contain additional new content and will only be sold in Walmart stores. ARC will continue to expand the limited engagement theatrical release nationwide throughout August and September as demand across the country remains high.

Maybe we can have a viewing party. I’m planning some sort of Smittypalooza event for Friday, 07 October to celebrate just a few blessings.

Terrorists for Tax Increases

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This morning I got a Twitter message from a friend who works at the DC offices of Americans for Tax Reform, informing me that they had been evacuated after a bomb threat. Alex Pappas at The Daily Caller reports:

Staffers at Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group run by conservative activist Grover Norquist, evacuated their building Monday morning after a bomb threat was called in, according to authorities.
A spokesman for the Washington D.C. police department, Anthony Clay, confirmed to The Daily Caller that officers from the explosive ordnance division were called to the building that houses the organization’s D.C. offices shortly after 9 a.m. . . .
No explosives were found, the officer said. Police had shut down 12th Street in Washington near ATR’s offices.
“The police are conducting an investigation,” said John Kartch, a spokesman for ATR, in an email.

Read the whole thing. Several left-wing bloggers (and, I’d imagine, some MSNBC hosts) have blamed ATR founder Grover Norquist for the debt-ceiling crisis, saying that Republicans who signed the ATR’s no-tax-increase pledge are the obstacles to a bipartisan “balanced approach” compromise. A few relevant points here:

  • Not every conservative is a Grover Norquist fan. Michelle Malkin especially hates him.
  • David Brooks took a cheap shot at Norquist last week, calling him a “Beltway bandit.” At risk of offending Michelle Malkin, then, I’ll confess to having a soft spot in my heart for anyone David Brooks doesn’t like.
  • Did I mention that Norquist is reputed to have said, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”?
  • Remember when every host on MSNBC was accusing Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin of fomenting right-wing extremist violence? Yeah. Tu quoque, Ed Schultz.
  • It strains our minds to think that anybody could be so stupid as not to see through the debt-ceiling kabuki-dance that Obama and the Democrats have orchestrated in their attempt to score a political “win” by blackmailing Republicans into voting for tax increases. However, as Russ Emerson pointed out in reference to Democratic Underground, there are some liberals so clueless that they believe everything they’re told by their so-called “leaders.” Such people are dangerous.

My frequent (and sometimes tasteless) jokes, my blogging about silly celebrities, the fun of “Rule 5 Sunday” — all of these are ways of signalling to readers that politics is not the be-all, end-all of human existence.

Even though there are times when we must rally the troops and exert maximum effort to win elections or fight other political battles, the minute we start thinking that our ideology or agenda is so urgent that it can and must be advanced through force or fraud, we have surrendered whatever claims of honor our cause ever deserved.

The Left has always been dishonorable. But we cannot defeat the Left by becoming the Left.

(P.S.: Alex Pappas is a good kid, even if he does work for Tucker Carlson. Alex is a ‘Bama boy. Roll Tide!)

Bogus ‘Facts’? Twisted Logic? Raw Hate? Of Course: It’s Democratic Underground!

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Next time somebody tries to tell you that the Right is a collection of crazy wingnuts, tell ’em to check out the DUmmies:

Compared to the poltroons at DU, the Huffington Post* is a regular collection of rocket scientists.
Even the assemblage of cretins at the Daily Kos has been heard to advise the DU, “hey, guys, you might want to dial the crazy back just a bit.”

Russ Emerson systematically dismantles a DU “argument.” It seems almost a waste of Russ’s brilliance to bother fisking such idiocy. A nasty job, but somebody had to do it.