Various & sundry: Do you believe in magic?

Women apologize much more often than men. I'm sorry but it's true.

Maybe that's why Barack put Hillary in charge of the State Department, which committed another embarrassing blunder, this time with those confusing foreign flags (shouldn't they consult some experts or something?):

The U.S. government said Sunday it made an "honest mistake" when it displayed an inverted Philippine flag — which wrongfully signified that the Southeast Asian nation was in a state of war — in a meeting hosted by President Barack Obama.

Myanmar's flag was hung upside down, too. Picky, picky, picky.


Has Michelle Obama been placed in charge of the diets of Gitmo detainees? Perhaps that's the explanation behind the latest Guantanamo human rights violation scandal: Gitmo Horrors Continue: Detainees Limited to One Ice Cream


John Kerry understands the anger of the electorate: It's born of ignorance, and like small children, we irrationally blame our minders for things we just can't understand. Doctor Zero nails it:

Like a clumsy kid going deep into the dinnerware department to catch a Nerf football pass in a department store, John Kerry lumbered to the nearest microphone to blurt out the latest meme: the Tea Party isn’t paying attention at all.  They’re just bleating in confusion, sheep panicking in the shadow of terrible forces they are not qualified to discuss: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,” Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday.

We should listen to Senator "Man of the People" Kerry's analysis because . . . ? If he had been paying attention he'd know that most Americans don't agree with him about who's informed and who isn't. 

An excerpt from Doc Z's response:

We don’t blame ourselves for the nation’s problems, Senator Kerry.  We blame you. We’re not just looking at your Party, either… or have you not been paying attention to the primaries?  We can see how much control the State has asserted over our lives through impenetrable layers of regulation, which even legislators admit they neither read nor understand.  We’re not just laughing off Nancy Pelosi’s comment that we had to pass ObamaCare to learn what was in it.  The Democrats demand we give them vast amounts of power without specifying what they plan to do with it, establishing any means to judge their success, or defining any limit to future expansion of the precedents they set today.  They demand our faith, along with the resulting surrender of faith in ourselves.  We reject those demands.

RTR.


The NYT reports that the Obama White House will attempt to re-conjure the '08 magic with a huge rally tomorrow at the University of Wisconsin. Our Campaigner-in-Chief has chosen an outdoor venue at the ultra-liberal Madison campus to ensure a large crowd and avoid the nasty optics of empty seats.

I wonder, do they really think they can put a bubble back together after it has popped? The Obama trendiness has passed. One of my readers pointed out a while back that a magic trick is ruined once the audience sees how the trick is done. Worse, some people feel deceived and cheated. But the Obami have got nothing else, so it's off to Madison they go. What do you think: Will Obama replay the Slurpee speech, or revert to Messiah mode?

On Tuesday, the president is scheduled to hold an old-fashioned campaign rally on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Party officials said they expected thousands to cram onto Library Mall, an outside setting, to see Mr. Obama.

A senior strategist said the event would be the biggest political rally since the end of the campaign and is meant to recapture “some of the old excitement and energy from the 2008 campaign that was so essential to Obama’s and Democrats’ success.”

The strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the thinking behind the new approach, said the White House was also trying to leverage the single event with more than 200 “watch parties” across the country, much as Mr. Obama’s campaign did two years ago.

“It’s not about one event in one state — it’s about generating excitement across the country,” the strategist said. “It’s a pretty big deal.”

For the president, it had better be. With the midterm election just over five weeks away, Mr. Obama’s Democratic Party is suffering from a lack of enthusiasm, as measured in numerous public opinion surveys.

I'll be watching. If Obama's team can figure out how to bring back a fad that's run its course, have I got a stocking stuffer for you!

*Updated to add this from the Washington Post's story on Obama's campus blitz (emphasis added):

When Obama steps onto a grass quad at the University of Wisconsin on Tuesday, he will deliver a newly tailored, more personalized campaign appeal aimed at ginning up enthusiasm, according to White House and senior Democratic officials. Plouffe said Obama will remind students of the work they put into his 2008 campaign and warn them that if they don't reengage now, "all that could be jeopardized."

The students on this leafy, generally liberal campus once constituted one of the strongest battalions in Obama's grass-roots army. Two years later, the political dynamic has changed. Across campus, stickers, signs or chalkings for any politician are scarce. The laundromat where Obama's young volunteers once staged late-night phone banks and planned bus trips to neighboring Iowa has gone out of business. And some students who say they voted for Obama in 2008 now say they don't even know who's on the ballot this fall.

Democrats hope Tuesday's rally could provide a needed jump-start. The event, featuring singer-songwriter Ben Harper, will be simulcast on more than 200 other campuses and be amplified by similar youth-oriented events in other states, featuring surrogates including Vice President Biden. On Monday, Obama will host an on-the-record conference call with college student journalists to tout his administration's record on issues important to young people.

Brilliant! Simulcasts for the apathetic and Vice President Joe Biden, who's, like, the bee's knees to the hep college crowd.


Thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the Buzzworthy link.
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