"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
Miss Sophie, a rich, if not prominent, Democratic Party donor, had invited a couple of friends over from Old Europe to celebrate her 90th birthday. Mr Winterbottom, Sir Toby, and Admiral von Schneider, failed to attend. North Dakota Representative Earl Pomeroy bailed, too. The old moonbat and her faithful, iron-livered manservant James press on: Continue reading The Empty Democratic Party Table →
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.
Just returned with Professor Donald Douglas from the Rose Bowl, where we interviewed fans and checked in at the credentials center, only to be told that we had to come back down here — about an hour drive south — to apply for credentials. Already filed my first report for The American Spectator:
Security was tight this morning at the Westin Hotel in Costa Mesa that is the Crimson Tide’s headquarters during their stay in southern California. A motorcycle squadron of California Highway Patrol officers was escorting the ‘Bama team up the San Diego Freeway — locally known as “the 405” — on their way to the Rose Bowl. . . .
Read the whole thing, including the trash-talk comments from Texas fans. Now filing from the media center at the Marriott here. It’s 3:10 p.m. PT, less than six hours until deadline for the Spectator, and I will have photos and videos, so be sure to check back soon.
UPDATE Thursday 6:20 a.m.: Hit my deadline for the Spectator and got turned down (!) for press credentials by deputy media coordinator Stephanie Montano.
Ron Christie’s column in The Hill:
President Barack Obama is being ill served by those by those closest around him: Mr. Cool must lose his cool and fire those staff members who have failed their president and failed their nation. . . .
Read the whole thing. I think the problem is not so much that Obama’s staffers are all amateurs, but rather that their experience — especially the experience of Rahm Emanuel and other Clinton administration veterans of the “permanent campaign” — is the wrong kind of experience. The belief that Republicans are worse enemies than al-Qaeda is one of those ideas that have consequences.
(Via Memeorandum.)
Of course, I don’t think vampire masks are racist, but expect the Left to make that accusation against Michelle Malkin.
Speaking of vampires and other things that suck worse than Avatar, David Brooks’ column yesterday was a backhanded putdown of the Tea Party movement, as Malkin notes.
I bought the New York Times yesterday in the San Francisco airport and, as soon as I saw that column, bitterly lamented that David Brooks Fisking Day found me traveling without WiFi access. Perhaps readers won’t mind a day-late delivery.
Because I have covered the Tea Party movement extensively, what struck me about Brooks’ column was the absolute absence of reporting. Not a single Tea Party source was interviewed for his column. Brooks is so busy admiring the crease of Obama’s pants leg, he can’t find time to go to a rally and talk to people like Jenny Beth Martin, Rhonda Lee Welsch, Andrea Shea King and Barbara Espinosa.
Reporting isn’t brain surgery, as Jimmie Bise likes to say, but it’s apparently beneath Brooks’ pay-grade. Brooks gets a six-figure salary from the New York Times, but couldn’t be bothered to travel upstate to cover Doug Hoffman’s NY23 campaign, which I covered on a tip-jar budget.
BTW, thanks to all the good readers who hit the tip jar yesterday. Saturday, I’ll be hanging out with Chris Cassone and his buddies at a Tea Party event in Altadena, Calif. Brooks’ elitist notion that Tea Party people are ignorant, angry rabble dissolves instantly the minute you talk to the people.
Chris Dodd is expected to announce his forthcoming retirement from the Senate and Dodd’s decision not to seek re-election “could damage the Obama administration’s attempts to enact a meaningful overhaul of U.S. financial markets this year.”
Professor Glenn Reynolds must be heartbroken at this unfortunate development. Things just haven’t been the same for Dodd since Ted Kennedy died. An open-faced “waitress sandwich” isn’t quite as much fun.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is broken up with remorse about Dodd’s decision.
TUSTIN, Calif.
Chris Cassone was wearing a Ronald Reagan T-shirt when I spotted him at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. United Express Flight 6396 touched down Tuesday shortly before 2 p.m., Pacific Time. Sunny skies, palm trees, 75 degrees — yeah, the working conditions here are grueling.
A veteran musician who performed at the 9/12 March on D.C., Cassone is active in the Pasadena Patriots — they’re having an event Saturday in Altadena that I plan to cover — and he volunteered to be my chauffeur today.
Our objective for the day was to reach Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, where the undefeated Alabama Crimson Tide is practicing Continue reading Fear and Loathing in Orange County →
by Smitty
How can anyone muster anything but forgiveness for Sullivan at the sight of this? (Emphasis mine throughout.)
Charles Johnson explains his concerns here. He’s particularly right about the kind of proto-fascist love of violence against “the other” that you see pulsating in the writing of, say, Michael Goldfarb or Robert Stacy McCain.
by Smitty
A. C. Kleinheider notes the danger of education not following enthusiasm:
Those caught up in tea party hysteria are the kind of voters Ross Perot captured in 1992. Two years later, without Perot, these foaming, vaguely culturally conservative, middle-income voters went Republican. Continue reading 18 Years and Fewer Hairs Later →