Does this mean that the US only has 57 states now? (via Twitchy)
“I want to build on the progress we’ve made. Doubling clean energy. I want fuel efficient cars and long-lasting batteries and wind turbines manufactured here in China! I don’t want them manufactured in China, I want them manufactured here in the United States!”
He did quickly correct himself, saying, “I don’t want them manufactured in China”, as you notice. Bless his heart, I suppose he’s tired. Too bad so many of the companies he’s chose to push taxpayer funds to have been losers.
At one point, the Netroots, the bloggers and such on the Left, were a major force within the Democrat Party. That was a time when George W. Bush was in office, and Democrats wanted that cool, sweet money and support from people who intentionally decided to see how crazy they could be. Who constantly referred to W as a monkey, who wrote and said disgusting things about Bush, who were constantly calling for his death, etc and so on. And the Daily Beast has sad face story up about their slow, painful demise
Susie Madrak started blogging in 2001, just after Sept. 11, back when the country was hurtling head-first into war and the blogosphere was a mysterious frontier on the far edges of the Internet.
“It was infuriating,†Madrak recalled of the political moment that spurred her to start throwing her own commentary online. “I could see that they were fabricating the reasons for war. Blogging was what I did instead of throwing a brick through the window.â€
Hmm, so David Freedlander starts off his story by featuring a 9/11 Truther and wonders just why the Nutroots is dying out as a political force?
But with another critical election two weeks away, politicians, political operatives, and even the bloggers themselves say the Netroots are a whisper of what they were only four years ago, a dial-up modem in a high-speed world, and that the brigade of laptop-wielding revolutionaries who stormed the convention castle four years ago have all but disappeared as a force within the Democratic Party.
The Dem insiders already have enough crazies (Stef Cutter, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, among others) and don’t need any more. But, that’s not really the real reason the Nutroots is on life support
But then came the wave election of 2006, and suddenly the presidency was in sight. But the Netroots, like most Democrats, were divided among Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. During that campaign, the political blogosphere on the left became less known for sparking offline activism and more known for epic fights among those with divided loyalties.
To use the Left’s own talking points, the Netroots were racists, and broke for Edwards and Clinton, not that upstart Obama. And we all have to remember that Obama never forgets a slight and tends to hold grudges personally, hence, the Netroots has been marginalized by the Party.
There’s also been a movement towards the big corporate “blogs” like Think Progress and Talking Points Memo and a consolidation of blogs. The coherency of outrage against Bush has disintegrated to being blogs with no idea what they want. The “sheepleness” is no longer apparent. Some might say “hey, they seem similar to the Right-o-sphere”. Yes. But, the right side of the Blogosphere never really attempted to become a big force. There was never any real coordination amongst the blogs to push certain stories, nor to coordinate with the GOP. The Right side never pushed the same talking points as everyone else. When a big story comes along, there is no coordination, it’s just bloggers who are interested in the same story, hence the reason that Right siders tend to link others to provide other points of view. Lefties rarely linked each other.
“The downside to the growth of Daily Kos and the professionalization of our medium is that the small-time blogger is on the verge of extinction,†writes Moulitsas. “That chaotic cacophony of amateur online voices was beautiful while it lasted, though.â€
You don’t find that on the Right. You still have big time bloggers on the Right, and the small fry (like me) still have a voice. More show up and raise their voice.
Asked if she hopes to keep at it, Madrak said: “Oh Christ, I hope not. I just turned 58. I have been out of work for four years. No one is breaking down the door to give me an offer. Until I have other options I have to keep doing this.â€
Liberalism in a nutshell: give me instead of going out and doing the hard work. And she’s still going to vote Democrat, after being out of work for 4 years in the Obameconomy.
An interesting poll from the AP, in which women are apparently not impressed with the negative small ball campaign of Obama’s, nor his believing that women only care about their #LadyParts
(WRAL) Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Republican Mitt Romney has erased President Barack Obama’s 16-point advantage among women, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. And the president, in turn, has largely eliminated Romney’s edge among men.
Those churning gender dynamics leave the presidential race still a virtual dead heat, with Romney favored by 47 percent of likely voters and Obama by 45 percent, a result within the poll’s margin of sampling error, the survey shows.
As the election nears, Romney has been playing down social issues and trying to project a more moderate stance on matters such as abortion in an effort to court female voters. The AP-GfK poll, taken Friday through Tuesday, shows Romney pulling even with Obama among women at 47-47 after lagging by 16 points a month earlier.
Of course, the AP story brings up the dumb remark by Richard Mourdock, which is being beaten to death by the same media which has soft peddled what happened in Libya, in which Obama did nothing to save the lives of Americans under assault. And, while women do favor Obama a bit when it comes to #LadyParts issues
A month ago, women favored Obama over Romney on the economy 56 percent to 40 percent. Now, the split has shifted to 49 percent for Romney and 45 percent for Obama.
Big, big shift. On the downside
A month ago, Romney’s advantage among men was 13 percentage points. Now, it’s down to 5 points, with most of the shift toward Obama coming among unmarried men.
Apparently, unmarried men welcome all the free contraception and abortifacients provided by Team Obama. But, overall, this poll is even worse for Obama then portrayed. When we deep dive into said poll, we find out the polling sample was
48% Democrat
37% Republican
5% True Independent who doesn’t lean either way
That comes from page 30 of the poll details. The previous page showed a break of 31/25/27 (D/R/I), but the deep dive changed that, so, with a sampling with 11% higher “going Dem”, Obama is losing badly.
We also learn that people think the country is headed in the wrong direction, 50 to 41%. That 60% think America’s economy is poor (to 24 who think it is good and 16 who are clueless). And only 23% think the economy got better last month, to 58% who think it stayed the same. And 69% say that their family’s financial situation got worse/stayed the same, with only 30% saying it got better.
Twelve days left till election day, and 13 till Obama is left sulking in misery, deciding how best to create a firestorm before he leaves office in January.
Organizing for America wants all their peeps to push out Obama’s marvelous, stupendous, world changing, er, miniscule 5 page plan (6 if you count the cover page) to all the people they no longer want to be friends with. On the 5th page they used the…..Air Force symbol, which, I guess they can sort of be forgiven for. Here’s the foolishness on the last page
Why, yes, that is the Puerto Rican flag. Yes, the country is a Commonwealth of the United States, but, one would think that the people who work for The Smartest President Evah!!!!!!® would understand the difference between the two flags. It’s not like Democrats would make stupid mistakes, like using Russian ships and Turkish planes at the DNC, use foreign troops on a webpage talking about supporting the US military, and others.
BTW, Team Obama finally has the 20 page glossy time share plan Obama agenda out. It’s as lame as you’d think.
…is an evil fossil fueled vehicle, a smartphone that sucks vampire electricity, and a bad orange tan from too much exposure to the sun aggravated by atmospheric CO2, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Plank’s Constant, with a post on Osama and Gaddafi registering to vote in (surprise!) Chicago.
I read this David Roberts piece over at Grist the other day, but, I missed an important part. Fortunately, Steven Goddard points it out. Roberts starts out with
 Watch this absolutely extraordinary video from the 1988 vice presidential debate, dug up by Brad Johnson of Forecast the Facts:
This is from 1988 — 24 years ago. The questioner doesn’t mamby-pamby around with he-said she-said, he states flatly that “most scientists†agree and that future generations are at risk.
And neither candidate bothers with dissembling or dodging. Both acknowledge the problem and promise to address it.
In 1988! In the ensuing 24 years, U.S. politics has moved backward on this issue.
In the ensuing 24 years, people realized that it was mostly a mule fritters issue based on giving government more control of people, the private sector, and shifting even more money to government. With the rise of the Internet, people were able to get a much less biased view as all the facts were laid out, not just the one sided “facts” appearing in the media. Anyhow, here we go
Throughout the decade from 1998 to 2008, Democrats swung around more solidly behind climate concern, but Republican sentiment stayed roughly steady. Right around 2008, however, there was a sharp uptick in skepticism about climate change, almost exclusively among far-right conservatives.
Now, what happened in 2008 that might have turned conservatives against climate? Hm … thinking … wait, wasn’t there an election that year? Why yes, I believe there was. Black Democrat took office, as I recall.
See? It couldn’t have anything to do with unhinged prognostications from Warmists, prognostications that weren’t coming to pass, that people were exposed to the other side of the issue, that science was showing that “climate change” was BS, that the models were failing, that the models were shown to be flawed, manipulated, and wrong, that data was being massaged to show what the researchers wanted it to show, that the researchers refused to release their raw data and methodologies, that the IPCC was shown to be highly flawed (to put it nicely), that those who believed in AGW the most had the biggest “carbon footprints”……no, it had to be raaaaacism.
As I wrote last night, President Obama’s attack mode during the Boca Raton debate seemed to suggest that he was the challenger trailing in the race rather than the incumbent nursing an alleged lead. But the president’s nasty streak is also displaying itself on the campaign trail, where he has been trying out one-liners about his rival like a would-be comic at open mic night at a comedy club. Last week’s big yuck was his “Romnesia†crack that alludes to the fact that Romney has changed his positions on some issues. Today, he doubled down on that one by saying Romney had “stage 3 Romnesia†at a rally in Delray Beach, Florida.
One might ask what exactly about cancer, a disease whose progress is generally referred to in stages in that manner, is so funny? But even if we are ready to give him a pass for showing bad taste, one has to question the strategy being employed here. For several months, the entire Democratic campaign seemed predicated on derision and demonization of Romney. But in the first presidential debate the GOP candidate blew that effort out of the water, changing not only the direction of the race but rendering much of the Obama campaign’s material obsolete if not completely irrelevant. Yet despite that, the president keeps playing the same losing hand aimed at denigrating an opponent who strikes most Americans as inherently reasonable. That makes one wonder whether the president’s condescending attitude as well as his sarcasm has a lot more to do with his anger at Romney’s strength and staying power than it does with any tactical political plan. More and more, it’s sounding as if President Obama is just plain mad at Romney because of the growing possibility that he’s going to lose the election.
One might wonder why Obama is so angry that he might lose the election. On one hand, he seems to like to be president; on the other, he doesn’t seem to like to do president. Might he not feel better if he was just plain old Barack H. Obama, free to play golf and party every day? He can supplement his government provided pension by writing a few more books about himself.
Perhaps it’s the notion that someone would dare speak back to Him, something certainly few have done over the past almost 4 years. Perhaps it’s the notion that he might lose all that power, and no longer be able to chose which target on his kill list to launch a drone strike on, and no longer be able to impose his will on the country through executive fiat. With some, power breeds the want of more power.
Perhaps this is just who he is, an angry, narcissistic, and petulant man. We saw brief flashes of this on the campaign trail in 2008. The Greek columns were a big hint. The nastiness displayed to John McCain post-coronation was a second clue. All the rage when Republicans dared to block Obama’s wish list of far left spending and policies. And along comes this Mitt Romney character, who’s dared to assail Obama with Obama’s own pathetic record. And that makes Obama angry. Obama positioned himself as The Savior of America, and people agreed with him, calling him The One and the Lightbringer, took pictures of Obama that made it seem that he had a halo around his head, and now this Romney guy is challenging Him. How dare he!
Reuters provides their own little “October Surprise”, one entirely of the Obama administrations making. We know that the State Dept. was initially labeling the attack on our Benghazi consulate as a terrorist attack, before switching over to the “it was a spontaneous attack that got a bit chippy”. The White House and State has since thrown the intelligence community under the bus numerous times, but, it seems they weren’t as negligent as they’ve been deemed. And, as This ain’t Hell…. posits “what did the president know and when did he know it?”
(Reuters) Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.
The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”
The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”
So, not long after 4pm on September 11th, the POTUS should have been informed of the attack on our consulate and people. A bit after 6pm, he should have been aware that an al Qaeda affiliated group was taking responsibility. Said emails were sent to the “White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.” Obama had a briefing scheduled with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at 5pm, so we know he was supposed to be at the White House. Is there anyone who can possibly think that no one would inform the POTUS that a consulate was under attack?
More important than what did he know, is “what did he do?” Was there any attempt to send in forces to protect our people, or did they simply rely on the September 17 Martyrs Brigade?
After that, why did he give a nebulous squishy Rose Garden speech on September 12 which mentioned terrorism, but did not ascribe the attack specifically to terrorism? And then go on to blame a video, including during his United Nations speech, along with others doing the same, such as Susan Rice and Press Secretary Jay Carney? There are two reasons we can deduce: the incompetence of the Obama administration during and before this crisis, which would include the failure to provide proper security in Benghazi, a place that even the press knew was infested with Islamic extremist groups and increasingly dangerous to Westerners.
The second is that if Obama had specifically labeled the attack “terrorism”, he would have been destroyed had he continued on with his Las Vegas campaign appearance. And as we’ve seen over the past almost 4 years, Obama is more interested in campaigning and the perks of the job than the details and duties of the job.
Your non-political/hotcoldwetdry thought of the day comes via a truly moronic DJ from some radio station I was listening to on IHeart Radio, who foolishly proclaimed that music in the 1970’s was horrible. Granted, there was disco, but that was at the end of the 70’s, and really only lasted a few years. So, for the fool, I’ll throw two words at him
Led Zeppelin
Which was interesting, because the fool played Zep’s Black Dog when he came back from commercial break.
I’ve had this conversation before with people, but, I’ve never put it “on paper”. So, did the 70’s suck for music, especially rock? Let’s see
Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, ELO, Grateful Dead, Deep Purple, Van Halen, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, The Who, CCR, The Band, Eric Clapton, AC/DC, Aerosmith, America, Bad Company, Blue Oyster Cult, Billy Joel, Bob Seger, Cheap Trick, Izzy Pop, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd (longest album in the top 200 ever!), Def Leopard, Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, Neil Young, Greg Kihn, J. Geils, James Taylor, Carly Simon, The Kinks, Little Feet, Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special, Meatloaf, Nick Lowe, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Peter Frampton, Genesis, The Pretenders, REO Speedwagon, The Scorpions, Sammy Hagar, Santana, Steely Dan, Supertramp, Ted Nugent, Triumph, UFO, Y&T, Yes, ZZ Top, Steve Miller, John Lennon, Elton John, The Police, Bob Marley, The Sex Pistols, Blondie, Lou Reed, Free, T. Rex, The Ramones, Bob Dylan, BTO, David Bowie, Van Morrison, Thin Lizzy, Golden Earring, The Hollies, Jimmy Buffet, The Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, Kansas, Kiss, Styx, …..whew, quite a bit, eh?
And there’s certainly more. That list is mostly off the top of my and and a quick scroll through my MP3s. These are all groups that made great music in the 1970’s. Some started in the 60’s, some started in the late 70’s.
Oh, and let’s not forget The Rolling Stones and Rush!
I really didn’t think he had the cajones to do it, because now Mann will be forced to actually provide all his raw data, methodology, and emails, all of which he has worked hard to attempt to conceal (via Watts Up With That?) From Mann’s Facebook page, which is always the best place to announce a lawsuit
Today, the case of Dr. Michael E. Mann vs. The National Review and The Competitive Enterprise Institute was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Dr. Mann, a Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, has instituted this lawsuit against the two organizations, along with two of their authors, based upon their false and defamatory statements accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, Jerry Sandusky. Dr. Mann is being represented by John B. Williams of the law firm of Cozen O’Connor in Washington, D.C.
Anthony Watts writes
I’m sure Mark Steyn is thrilled with the prospect of now being able to do additional commentary on this side show. I can’t wait for depositions and discovery.
Flashback to Climate Depot, which has good background on the whole issue. My expectation is that Mann will make a lot of noise, hoping the defendants will back down, and when the don’t (you know Mark Steyn won’t!), he will quietly drop the case.
drowningpuppies on If All You See…: “The thing that never happens and could never happen and that only evil people predicted would happen has happened again.…” Oct 6, 15:33
Elwood P. Dowd on If All You See…: “Donny admits that spending $20 million of federal funds on campaign ads was a baaaad idea and floated that he’ll…” Oct 6, 13:27
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Throughout the decade from 1998 to 2008, Democrats swung around more solidly behind climate concern, but Republican sentiment stayed 
