Obama Shows Hurt Feelings To Jan Brewer

No doubt as more details come out they'll be plenty for both sides of the political spectrum to point fingers at, but think about this for a second. The President of the United States has his feelings hurt by something written in a book by one of the nation's governors and he brings it up during a meeting with said governor.

I can't find a link but I seem to recall early in George W. Bush's first term Jimmy Carter said some nasty things about him. When they next met, Carter sheepishly said he was sorry about that and Bush's reaction was akin to "Dude, don't worry about it."

Stark contrast.

UPDATE: Ace's take.

Economic Recession Is Over!

Normally I don't like to soil my blog with images of Stalinists, but I'm making an exception today due to the great news. Did you hear? America is back. We're in great shape.


All this yakkity-yak about high unemployment and crushing debt, the housing market woes? Food stamps? Meh! President Obama and Senator Schumer have assured us that the state of the Union is strong. Hell, it's so good we don't even need a budget. In fact, maybe after 2012 we won't have to "pass" a budget through Congress ever again. You get me? Huh? You know what I'm talkin' 'bout. But rest assured, government loves you.

Seriously though, many will say that things actually are better and getting better. After all, unemployment is down to around 8.5%. That's progress right? Wrong. What Obama and Schumer are doing is creating a new normal. Thousands leave the employment market and so things look a little better. Gas may go down a few dozen cents and so things look a little better. Before you know it, as the economic conditions ebb and flow, you forget what things were like in 2006.

Barack Obama is not delusional, he knows exactly what he's doing, and when he retires either next year or in 2017, he'll raise his glass to the destruction and the fact that America has been taken down a notch. That's always been the goal. America, in his mind, is immoral and a mistake. It can't be destroyed but it can be weakened.

This is a big reason I'm not as animated as most folks about the choice between Romney and Gingrich. Either one would solve 50% of the problem we have now by simply taking the oath of office. The concerns people have with both candidates are nothing compared to the consequences of not having either man in office come 2013. Bain Capital; individual mandates; affairs...any other election year these issues would be huge or at least worth considering, but right now they mean nothing. Romney and Gingrich are both on the right side of the only issue that matters in this election: love of country.

Saul Alinsky Makes Appearance At White House

In the form of a question from Fox News reporter Ed Henry. Spokescreep Jay Carney was asked if there's a portrait of Alinsky hanging in the White House. Not surprisingly, he got a non-answer.

This arose from Newt Gingrich bringing up Saul Alinsky in a recent debate. This is good. The more Americans that hear the name "Saul Alinsky" and investigate who he is the better chance we have that the electorate will be at least somewhat informed come November.

This will get you started:

The MSM Hates You

Caught a little bit of Rush Limbaugh's opening monologue yesterday and it was epic. Rush talked about the opening of the South Carolina debate where John King asked Newt Gingrich about his ex-wife's recent claims that he wanted an open-marriage and other tawdry details. Here's the clip in case you haven't seen it:



Now this is where Rush is valuable because he sees beyond the obvious and gets to the heart of what's really going on. Every American who considers themselves a conservative, libertarian or even just a moderate Republican needs to hear this: 

RUSH: The audience is eating it up! They're eating it up off the floor. They're sucking it up with straws! They love it! Now, let me tell you one thing here, folks: You cannot shame the mainstream media. If any of you are thinking that the media learned a lesson -- if any of you believe that the media finally had it handed to 'em, if you believe that the media had their eyes opened and they are fully awake now and they understand what they're dealing with -- forget it. John King is proud of what happened last night. John King is a hero in the Main Street media because he didn't back down, because he continued to illustrate how it is that the media does really control the agenda. That was a demonstration of the power they hold over every public figure's head, that they choose to hold like a guillotine.

John King... There may even be some jealousy and envy within the journalist ranks (well, not journalists; within the Democrat Party ranks) because John King is a guy that got in Newt's face, stared him down -- and the fact that Newt told him off? It's a badge of honor. If you are thinking that John King was embarrassed and ran away with his tail tucked between his legs and learned his lesson and it'll never happen again? Ah, ah, ah, ah. You cannot shame the mainstream media. They are proud of this. They delight in their power to destroy candidates that they don't like. They revel in the fact that they can keep so many conservatives from even thinking about getting into politics. A lot of the so-called journalists watching this probably were pumping their fists.

A lot of the journalists watching this were doing the Obama cheer: "Yes, we can! Yes, we can!" and do not doubt me. If you think King was embarrassed -- if you think he was suffering from an elevated heart rate during the middle of this, if you think he felt shamed, if you think, "Oh, my God, Newt's beating the crap out of him" -- you are dead wrong. He got exactly what he wanted out of this. Do NOT doubt me. At the end of the day the message to every conservative who hasn't run for office is: "You want a piece of this? You want some of this? You want Brian Ross hounding you and your ex-wife and then you want me asking you about it on national TV the next night? Come on in. We're ready." That's the message from John King and CNN last night, and do not doubt me on this. 

That's exactly right. Rush is the father of the fight that Andrew Breitbart is fighting, that James O'Keefe is fighting, that NewsBusters is fighting and I (in a very small way) am fighting. The Fourth Estate is really a Fifth Column. This is never going to change unless politicians stop playing by the MSM's rules. It's time for a media revolution.

Free Speech WiFi

Fascinating stuff over at Volokh Conspiracy about a police investigation into the NAME of a personal WiFi network:

A bigot named their WiFi signal “F— All Jews and N—-” — and now cops are investigating.

The hateful signal I.D. popped up on the iPhone of a 28-year-old mom inside a Teaneck, N.J. recreation center, where her 3-year-old daughter was attending dance class....

The Teaneck Police Department Juvenile Bureau and the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Computer Crime Unit are investigating it as a “possible bias crime,” Wilson said.

Eugene goes into the possibilities of this being punishable as either obscenity or so-called "fighting words." (Hint: it's not.) Ah, Cohen v. California...it's been a while.

Anywho, while I would have no interest in naming my WiFi at home something racist, this does make me realize that I'm missing a golden opportunity to spread some of my own propaganda and screw with my neighbors. So instead of the boring name I have for it now, I could call it "NOBAMA 2012" or "Meth Lab? What Meth Lab?"

It's the little things in life.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Newt?

Well, the revelations on Newt Gingrich from his second ex-wife/first ex-mistress aren't exactly earth-shattering in my mind. It's always amusing to hear the complaints of Mistress #1 about Mistress #2 and so on. Bill Clinton has to be laughing himself silly right now.

I think most Republican voters were fairly familiar with Newt's marriages and the chicanery therein, but who knows, this might piss off a devout Christian or two. It's not a big deal to me as my first priority is that the new president removes the boot from our throats. ABO folks, AB-freakin'-O!

I guess at this point it wouldn't hurt to restate my prime directive for this election. Whoever gets the nomination is not going to be perfect. There were no great candidates this year with Rubio, Ryan, West and others sitting it out. (Perry was the closest we had to a Great Conservative Hope until we found out he was the second-coming of Jack Kemp, debate-wise.) Flipping the Senate has to be just as high a priority as flipping Obama. The new president will want to roll with the tide...so we (Tea Party, economic libertarians, strong defense-types) need to be the tide.

Until then, keep grabbing at those moonbeams.

SOPA/PIPA Makes For Strange Bedfellows

And that's a good thing.

Recent legislation in the forms of SOPA and PIPA have united the most unlikely of allies in the form of RedState, Wikipedia, Google, UbuWeb, Dana Loesch, and many others on the Left and the Right. PIPA co-sponsor Marco Rubio has heard the arguments and has decided to give the legislation a big rethink:

In recent weeks, we’ve heard from many Floridians about the anti-Internet piracy bills making their way through Congress. On the Senate side, I have been a co-sponsor of the PROTECT IP Act because I believe it’s important to protect American ingenuity, ideas and jobs from being stolen through Internet piracy, much of it occurring overseas through rogue websites in China. As a senator from Florida, a state with a large presence of artists, creators and businesses connected to the creation of intellectual property, I have a strong interest in stopping online piracy that costs Florida jobs.

However, we must do this while simultaneously promoting an open, dynamic Internet environment that is ripe for innovation and promotes new technologies.

Earlier this year, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and without controversy. Since then, we've heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences.

Therefore, I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. Furthermore, I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor. Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet.

Ed Morrissey takes it home (emphasis mine):

No one disputes the need to protect and defend copyrights.  Most of the websites participating in this protest have an interest in battling piracy.  The need to protect copyrights, however, does not outweigh the need for checks on prosecutorial power and due process for the accused.  Rubio has belatedly gotten it right — Reid needs to pull back PIPA, the House needs to scratch SOPA, and both need to start over again in those efforts.

Stopping foreign piracy is necessary, but if this isn't done exactly right, our government will run roughshod over "fair use" rights based on the latest political whims. (Can you say "Righthaven times-10?") We have to be vigilant in the defense of the free and open Internet. FCC Chairman Julius "Caesar" Genachowski has been attempting power grabs under the banner of "Net Neutrality" for the past three years. Give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

SOPA Dead For Now, Lessons Abound

I had a college professor once say, "Don't get mad, get better." This turn of phrase applies to more than meets the eye.

It's often been said by libertarians like myself that the only way to fight bad speech is with more speech. In other words, you don't try and stop people from speaking, you simply make a better argument rendering their bad speech impotent.

The same is true with technology. A bill in Congress getting a lot of ink is SOPA which stands for "Stop Online Piracy Act." As with most if not all Congressional bills, the name is as such that you couldn't possibly disagree with the wording. They should really just add "And Feed Starving Children" to the end of every bill thus rendering any vote against it a crime against humanity.

Regardless, the SOPA bill is, surprise surprise, not what it's cracked up to be. It's intent (they say) is to have Google and other online search sites stop linking to file-sharing sites and require ISPs to block these sites. Obviously this is something that Hollywood and the music industry are pushing, but opponents say this goes against what has been a free and open Internet and requires too much policing by the ISPs and search engines. There's also the fact that if given this power it's just a gateway to more power for the government.

One of Steve Jobs' first inventions was a device that would trick phone lines into giving you free long distance. What happened after that? The phone companies developed new technology to work around such devices. In other words, they didn't get mad, they got better. (Well, they did get mad actually, but they also got better and the delicate dance between hacking and innovation continues.)

The same can be said here. Instead of trying to stifle the free flow of the Internet, the movie and music companies need to find ways to make the current technological situation work for them. An example of this was recently showcased by, of all people, comedian Louis C.K.:

Days after comedian Louis C.K. launched his content and distribution experiment, the results are in, and it appears that he may have inadvertently kicked off a new era of celebrity-controlled Internet content.

On Dec. 10, C.K. offered his one-hour "Live at the Beacon Theater" show for streaming or download for $5, free of any digital rights management (DRM). The move received a lot of attention via traditional and social media, but the main question on every one's mind was: How will a show delivered directly from a niche comedian do when offered without the marketing muscle and distribution controls of a major company like HBO or Comedy Central?

According to data posted on C.K.'s Web site, the experiment pulled in a $200,000 profit.

This is the future. While the big entertainment companies are certainly within their rights to try and stop piracy of their intellectual property, running to the government isn't the solution. If you make your product inexpensive and easily accessible then online pirates will be banished to Davy Jones' Locker.

Rasmussen: Bain Bombs

As you may have read on my Twitter feed, I did an unscientific poll of a handful of Republicans this past Friday night over pints of ale. The consensus was that the Bain attacks on Romney, if anything, make them like Romney more than they did before which was not much.

Now for something more scientific via Rasmussen:

Voters are closely divided over whether Mitt Romney’s business career is a plus or a minus, but most Republicans see it as a plus. Additionally, a plurality of all voters think he would do a better job than President Obama dealing with the economy.

As Saturday’s critical South Carolina Primary approaches, it appears the criticism of Romney by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Governor Rick Perry, in particular, is not resonating with Republican voters nationally. Fifty-five percent (55%) of those voters believe Romney’s record in business is primarily a reason to vote for him versus only 20% who see it as a reason to vote against him.

This presents an interesting problem for Obama as I'm sure he was prepared to pick up the vulture capitalist ball and run with it. Of course, this poll could explain why the President has begun paying lip-service to the idea of merging government departments and cutting government jobs.

And I say "lip-service" because:

Obama’s proposal to merge and reorganize government departments has come under fire from some members of Congress and business groups because it aims initially to cut only 1,000 to 2,000 from the 2.1 million federal workforce, and because these job cuts would be achieved mainly through attrition.

At this point, Romney might be well served to trumpet his Bain days. Damn the torpedoes consultants, full speed ahead!

Cowards And Phonies

Barry Rubin has an excellent column today on death of political discourse. Read the whole thing but here's the heart of the text:

We are facing something truly remarkable. A system in which those on one side — and obviously this applies to far more than just the Israel issue — can simply wave aside any logical argument and ignore any evidence. All that’s needed is a category of denunciation: racism, hate speech, Islamophobia, etc., along with other catchwords like “fair share,” “one percent,” “global warming deniers,” and down the list.

Where did this come from? How was this remarkable weapon developed? One can mention the Frankfurt School or Saul Alinsky but clearly we are dealing with one of the most amazing and effective inventions in the modern history of political debate and struggle. It is the magic wand that turns terrorists into victims and victims into terrorists.

And sadly, it's a tactic that even the GOP has embraced.