Eastwood: Weird but meaty [updated]

I thought Clint Eastwood's conversation-with-chair shtick was pretty awkward. Tweeters who likened him to Grandpa Simpson weren't far off, in my opinion. But Eastwood's substantive remarks to the crowd at the RNC were exactly on target and, well, made my day. Here's some good commentary from Political Clown Parade on Clint's, er . . . unique -- that's it! -- improv performance last night:

I don’t care what the Left, whose hair is on fire right now, says about Clint Eastwood’s Q & A with an invisible POTUS last night at the RNC Convention.  I don’t care.

This thin-skinned, crybaby of a president has Clint Eastwood in his head.  All the evidence anyone needs is that the errand boy sent by grocery clerks responded on Facebook and Twitter saying, “This seat’s taken.”

What’s puzzling about Eastwood’s empty chair is why Obama felt he had to respond to the whimsical superstar?  The only answer is he feels threatened.  What we see is an actor’s roughest mockery of a politician and the politician lacking the discipline to let it go.

Right. Obama cares, Eastwood doesn't. (You could tell from his hair.)

Here's the meaty part, which was good and red:

Eastwood reminded conventioneers and viewers, “I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen.  Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we own this country.  We, we own it.  It is not you (looking down at the empty chair) owning it and not politicians owning it.  Politicians are employees of ours.  And, so they are just going to come around and beg for votes every few years.  It is the same old deal.  But I just think it is important that you realize that you’re the best in the world.  Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or whether you’re a Libertarian or whatever, you are the best.  And we should not ever forget that.  And when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go.”

The astute John Hayward has an interesting take:

Clint was there to tell [independents] it’s OK to find Obama, his ugly campaign operation, and his increasingly shrill band of die-hard defenders ridiculous. It’s OK to laugh at them. [. . .]

We already knew it was OK to make fun of the absurd Joe Biden – which should not diminish anyone’s anger that such an vicious and foolish man was placed a heartbeat from the Presidency – but Clint took it up a notch: “Joe Biden is kind of a grin with a body behind it.” Perfect. [. . .]

And it’s OK to let Obama go, as Eastwood said, in what I think will prove to be his most widely quoted line: “When somebody does not do the job, you’ve got to let them go.” The significance of that statement, coupled with the raspy straight-shooting delivery of Dirty Harry, should not be underestimated.

Was there a method to Clint's madness?

Actually, it was interesting to note how hard some of Clint’s deadly serious lines hit, because of the strange comedy surrounding them.  Is that what he had in mind all along? 

I have no idea. But read the rest.
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Many thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the link.
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Do not miss Steyn's take: Play Clinty For Me
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I just watched it again and enjoyed it a lot more than I did last night. This time, I didn't feel anxious that he was going to get lost, and those moments of hesitation were fewer and briefer than they seemed the first time. The bombs he dropped were more fun when I didn't have to worry that he was going to draw a blank and perhaps wander off. I do believe he knew what he was doing.

Jim Geraghty concurs: Could Eastwood have been much better than most thought?
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"Reeking character"

A lady named Renee with a lovely southern accent called in to Rush today with an astute comment on Paul Ryan's speech and what it revealed about his character:

CALLER: This phony War on Women. One of the other things that I noticed last night, and I will have to preface my statement by saying that I am southern born and bred, and I'm keenly aware of how men love and respect and honor their women.

RUSH: Now, or used to?

CALLER: Well, yes. Historically, that has been true.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: But in the South, we still have that honor and dignity among men.

RUSH: Chivalry is alive and well?

CALLER: Yes, it is.

RUSH: Okay, good. Good. Good, good.

CALLER: And I think it still is in the GOP. But I'm not seeing it across the aisle in the Democrat Party. And last night, you had mentioned the Ryan statement about his mother and how he honored his mother so lovingly in his speech last night. Well, the other thing that I noticed was, he talked about the care-giving that he gave as a young man to his grandma who had Alzheimer's.

RUSH: That is right. And I'll never forget. He said, "We gave her the love she needed, even though she often was unaware of it." Yeah, that was poignant.

CALLER: Sure. And for people who have suffered with that illness, they know that the onus is on the caregiver; that the victim of that disease has very little to give back. So that shows to me an integrity and a love of a man who really cared for his grandma.

RUSH: That's it. You have nailed it. Paul Ryan reeked character last night, and that's what the Democrats are not going to be able to penetrate: His character and integrity.

CALLER: Right, and if you will recall --

RUSH: Damn right.

CALLER: One thing that I want to recall is the only statement I have ever heard Barack Obama make about his "white grandma" who gave him all the privilege that any young man would be proud to have, is that she was afraid of black men. I just think there's such a stark contrast.

RUSH: You know what? That's right. In fact, the actual phrase that Obama used was, "She's a typical white woman."

CALLER: Yes. Very disrespectful.

RUSH: That's right. That is exactly how Obama characterized her in his big race speech --

CALLER: That's right.

RUSH: -- where he threw Reverend Wright overboard while still continuing to sit in the pew.

CALLER: And, Rush? If you can't love and honor and respect your own mama and your own grandma, then you're not gonna respect and love and honor other women or other people.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: It starts at home.

RUSH: It goes right to character.

CALLER: Right.

To be accurate, Obama called his grandmother "a typical white person," not "woman." But that doesn't affect the validity of Renee's point, which, by the way, is the exact opposite of the recent bizarro allegation by Sen. Ma'am Boxer of "sickness" among conservative men who "don't like their moms," etc.

Expect more weak, ineffectual attempts by the left to demonize Ryan. Desperation will force them to keep trying, but he's an impossible target.

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Ryan: "A country where everything is free but us"

In case you missed it, here's Paul Ryan's convention speech (transcript here):



Ryan is for real, or what the pundits refer to as "authentic." He has conducted his life and career in such a way that he doesn't have to pretend he's someone else. Refreshing, huh?

We were gratified to hear him directly take on Obama's record. Some choice bits:

President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises
on the record, and then calls that the record.
(LAUGHTER)

But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is
not the economy that Barack Obama inherited, not the economy as
he envisions, but this economy that we are living.
College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in
their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and
wondering when they can move out and get going with life.
(APPLAUSE) [. . .]

None of us -- none of us have to settle for the best this
administration offers, a dull, adventureless journey from one
entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country
where everything is free but us.
(APPLAUSE)

That's Obama's world in a nutshell.

Ryan's lovely 83 year-old mother was in the audience. Funny, she doesn't seem to resent his scheme to push her off a cliff at all!

Tweeters last night were joking about Biden's likely terror at the prospect of debating Ryan. But I don't think Joey B. has enough sense to be afraid. His ego is impregnable, and he's pretty sure his IQ is a lot higher than Ryan's. There will be no holding him back.

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More highlights here from Guy Benson, including this:

When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life.  I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself.  That’s what we do in this country.  That’s the American Dream.  That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.

And this:

Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country.  

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Thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the link.

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The best speeches I heard last night

Not Chris Christie's (meh), and not Ann Romney's (sorry, she has a nice smile but I'm not that interested), but Rick Santorum's and Rep. Artur Davis's.



HuffPo has the text of the prepared version here. Here's an excerpt, roughly corrected to match the actual delivery:

Maybe we should have known that night in Denver that things that begin with styrofoam Greek columns and artificial smoke typically don't end well.

Maybe the Hollywood stars and the glamour blinded us a little: you thought it was the glare, some of us thought it was a halo.

But in all seriousness, do you know why so many of us believed? We led with our hearts and our dreams that we could be more inclusive than America had ever been, and no candidate had ever spoken so beautifully.

But dreams meet daybreak: the jobless know what I mean, so do the families who wonder how this Administration could wreck a recovery for three years and counting.

So many of those high-flown words have faded.

Remember, my friends, the President saying of negative politics and untrue ads, "not this time?"

Who knew "not this time" just meant "not unless the economy is still stuck and we can't run on our record?"

Remember when the president said, of his own election, "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal?"

Who knew the plain English version of it was, "middle America, get ready to shell out 60 bucks to fill up your car?"

And in terms of their crown jewel legislative achievement: who knew that when asked, "could government conceivably impose a federal mandate requiring middle class Americans to buy health insurance whether they could afford it or not?" that the Obama answer would be "Yes we can!"

So, this time, in the name of 23 million of our children and parents and brothers and sisters who are officially unemployed, underemployed, or who have stopped looking for work, let's put the poetry aside, let's suspend the hype, let's come down to earth and start creating jobs again.

This time, instead of moving oceans and healing planets, let's pay our bills down and pay down the debt so we control our own future.

And of course, we know that opportunity lies outside the reach of some of our people.

We don't need flowery words about inequality to tell us that, and we don't need a party that has led while poverty and hunger rose to record levels to give us lectures about suffering.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are Americans who are listening to this speech right now who haven't always been with you, and I want you to let me talk -- just to them - for a moment.

I know how loaded up our politics is with anger and animosity, but I have to believe we can still make a case over the raised voices.

There are Americans watching right now who voted for the president, but they're searching right now, because they know that their votes didn't build the country they wanted.

To those Democrats and independents whose minds are open to argument: listen closely to the Democratic Party that will gather in Charlotte and ask yourself if you hear your voice in the clamor.

Ask yourself if these Democrats still speak for you.

When they say we have a duty to grow government even when we cannot afford it, does it sound like compassion to you -- or does it sound like recklessness?

When you hear the party that glorified Occupy Wall Street blast success; when you hear them minimize the genius of the men and women who make jobs out of nothing, is that what you teach your children about work?

When they tell you America is this unequal place where the powerful trample on the powerless, does that sound like the country your children or your spouse risked their lives for in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Do you even recognize the America they are talking about? And what can we say about a house that doesn't honor the pictures on its walls?

John Kennedy asked us what we could do for America. This Democratic Party asks what can government give you. Don't worry about paying the bill, it's on your kids and grandkids.

Bill Clinton took on his base and made welfare a thing you had to work for; this current crowd guts the welfare work requirement in the dead of night and won't tell the truth about it.

Bill Clinton, Jack Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson reached out across the aisle and said meet me in the middle; but their party rammed through a healthcare bill that took over one-sixth of our economy, without accepting a single Republican idea, without winning a single vote in either house from a party whose constituents make up half of this country.

You know, the Democrats used to have a night when they presented a film of their presidential legends: folks, if they do it in Charlotte, the theme song should be this year's hit, "Now You're Just Somebody That I Used to Know."

My fellow Americans, when great athletes falter, their coaches sometimes whisper to them "remember who you are." It's a call to their greatness at a moment when their bodies and spirit are too sapped to remember their strength.

This sweet, blessed, God-inspired place called America is a champion that has absorbed some blows.

But we bend, we do not break.

This is no dark hour, this is no dark hour; this is the dawn before we remember who we are.

So may it be said of this time in our history, 2008 to 2011: lesson learned; 2012: mistake corrected. God bless you, God bless you, Tampa, God bless you, America. Let's take this country back.

Then there was Rick Santorum's speech, which was actually quite beautiful, emphasizing the critical importance of traditional families, work instead of dependency, human dignity, and love. You can watch it here and read it here.

We watched the speeches on CNN through our Roku, streaming almost live with no talking heads except the ones on stage. The invaluable RightScoop has all the videos.

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Update: Jim Geraghty reminds me of the stronger passages of Gov. Christie's and Mrs. Romney's speeches.

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Things that make you stupid

This just in: Teenagers who regularly smoke cannabis are putting themselves at risk of permanently damaging their intelligence, according to a landmark study

The same thing might apply to chronic Chris Matthews viewers. How else to account for his having any audience at all, however miniscule? I watched the two clips that are going around (here and here) and almost felt sorry for this pathetic man who has been given a microphone for no apparent reasons other than his penchant for talking rudely over his guests and his rabid liberalism. Stacy McCain on that:

In case you didn't realize it, the only claim Matthews has to being a journalist is that he is a partisan Democrat. Matthews never worked a day as a reporter, never covered a city council meeting or a homecoming parade. After evading the Vietnam-era military draft by enrolling in the Peace Corps, Matthews moved to Washington and worked on the staff of various congressional Democrats before unsuccessfully running for Congress as a Democrat, later joining the White House staff as a speechwriter for Democrat Jimmy Carter, then spending the Reagan years as a top aide to Democrat House Speaker Tip O'Neill. Somehow, this ultra-political background as a partisan operative qualified Matthews for the job of Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Chronicle. Such is the biography of the man who has been employed for the past 15 years as a "journalist" by NBC, hosting his own show on the network's little-watched MSNBC cable franchise while appearing regularly on the broadcast network during coverage of major political events.

Reince Priebus (did I get those i's and e's right?), the recent target of Matthews' verbal bullying, responded appropriately in an interview with Sean Hannity, suggesting Chris should go jump in the lake.

Also, this:


"This president hasn't run a garage sale." Yup. And it shows.

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The Ego Has Landed

Unreal.

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Update:  

Neil Armstrong: The first man to walk on the moon in the heady days of American exceptionalism has passed away, preceded in death by the U.S. space program with his heirs now hitching rides on Russian spacecraft.

Read the rest. Armstrong was appalled at Obama's destruction of the space program.

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Video: "Has Obama Earned Your Vote?"

Focus groups have indicated that this is the most effective anti-Obama ad:



It's not flashy, nor particularly negative, but seems to capture the disillusionment of many voters who expected something better from Obama's vague hope-and-change-ism than what he's delivered. So pass it on.

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Music break: Keely Smith

Sorry -- still recovering from our little vacation and lacking the time, and inclination, to post much about politics (though I am tweeting a little here and there). So how about some music? Please pardon a rerun, but this fabulous performance is a favorite of mine, and if you've never seen it, consider this your lucky day:



(I can't figure out who wrote the song. It's a common title. If anyone has a clue please pass it on.)

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The sickness out there, part 2

I linked to it on the right and Tweeted it as well, but in case you missed it, this piece by George Neumayr is a must-read. A bit:

This culture of hectoring explains why Mitt Romney rushed to the cameras upon hearing Akin's remark to pronounce abortion in those cases "appropriate." In a rotten culture, proof of one's "civilized" bona fides comes from such shameless pandering.

An authentically conservative party would find Romney's unprincipled position far more chilling than Akin's gaffe. If unborn children gain or lose their right to life depending upon the circumstances of their conception, then the party has already conceded that that right doesn't exist. Ronald Reagan understood the implications of that concession and never wavered in his defense of the right to life of all unborn children, not just some of them.

Instead of rejecting this media-determined culture of empty and opportunistic outrage, which rests on nothing more than poisonous Planned Parenthood-style propaganda, panicky GOP officials reinforced it this week by treating Akin as a monstrous leper. His stupid remark was thereby turned into a supposedly wicked one and treated as a great crisis for the party.

A party less cowed by political correctness and less in thrall to conventional wisdom wouldn't have cannibalized its own so quickly.

Emphasis above is mine. During the debates, Rick Santorum was asked about his no-exceptions position, too, and gave a vastly better explanation:

You know the Supreme Court of the United States in a recent case said that a man who committed rape could not be killed, could not be subject to the death penalty. Yet the child conceived as a result of that rape could be. That to me sounds like a country that doesn't have its morals correct. That child did nothing wrong. That child is an innocent victim. To be victimized twice would be a horrible thing. It is an innocent human life. It is genetically human from the moment of conception and is a human life and we in America should be big enough to try to surround ourselves and help women in those terrible situations who have been traumatized already. To put them through another trauma of an abortion, I think, is too much to ask. So I would absolutely stand and say that one violence is enough.

And then I wrote:

The exception-for-rape-and-incest has never been a defensible stance. It's nice to hear someone articulate that. (Though whether giving birth or having the child suctioned-and-scraped away is more subjectively traumatic for the woman is beside the point if the child, objectively speaking, is a child, no?)

I don't know Todd Akin from a hole in the ground. But, weird "legitimate rape" remark aside, his no-exceptions stand is perfectly sound. And relatively rare, which is a sad commentary on our culture and our politics.

Meanwhile, the Party of Abortion confirms the aptness of that title. I asked earlier whether they really wanted to make this election about abortion, especially given Obama's chilling, ghoulish history on the born-alive issue, which is receiving renewed publicity:



I still find his cold-bloodedness shocking in the extreme. His second child, born in 2001, was still a baby when he said those words -- "limp and dead," "temporarily alive" -- which left no doubt that what he was talking about was infanticide.

But to get back to the question, yes, it seems they do want to open this hideous can of worms. Paul Bedard reports on the DNC's plans to go full culture-of-death at their convention:

Democrats said that they will feature Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parent Action Fund, Nancy Keenan, president of the NARAL Pro-Choice America and Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student whose plea for federal birth control funding drew the ire--and a subsequent apology--from Rush Limbaugh.

What's more, the Democrats are expanding their list of women ready to assail the GOP on women's issue, adding Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski and actress Eva Longoria to the list that already includes Sen. John Kerry and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

I think they're going to need to add a few more actresses if they expect anyone to watch their gruesome spectacle.

Q: Can Sen. Mikulski and Miss Longoria exist at the same venue at the same time without canceling each other out, like matter and anti-matter? Stay tuned!

***
Many thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the link.
***

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The sickness out there

I'm sure there are more annoying people in the world than Sen. Barbara Boxer but right now I can't think of one. Here, at a Planned Parenthood event, she diagnoses what's wrong with conservative men:

 “There is a war against women, and Romney and Ryan — if they are elected — would become its top generals,” Boxer said calling Akin’s comments a “direct outgrowth” of the extreme positions on abortion held by Republicans.

“Where’s the outrage by Mitt Romney?” Boxer asked, “There is a sickness out there in the Republican Party, and I’m not kidding. Maybe they don’t like their moms or their first wives; I don’t know what it is.”

Not sick, in her world, is the lucrative, ongoing exploitation of women and mass-slaughter of children by the abortion industry, in which her pals at Planned Parenthood lead the way. Yes, there is a sickness out there all right.

More of her speech here. Boxer and company are busily spinning Akin's blunder as proof that all pro-life men are pro-rape or something. I don't see how that's going to work. Do they really want to make this election about abortion? Because America isn't nearly as "pro-choice" as Barack Obama, who, lest we forget, wants to keep our options open all the way through to the fourth trimester:

As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it - is now outside the mother's womb and the doctor continues to think that it's nonviable but there's, let's say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they're not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved. [p. 32 of transcript]

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Music break: That Sunday, That Summer

Except for occasional peeks at Twitter, which by itself is a really confusing way to get news, we didn't pay much attention to current events during our little vacation to Chicago. So it will have to be politics tomorrow and music tonight. The following was written by Joe Sherman and George David Weiss in 1963:



Thanks to Chicagoland friend GF for calling my attention to this sweet song, which I had remembered only dimly.

Here's one of about a million pictures we took at the Chicago Botanic Garden, one of our favorite places:

Here's an even favorite-er place, but it wasn't quite the way we remembered it:

We heard the scaffolding was coming down on Monday so we popped back in and grabbed this quick picture of part of the restored ceiling before we got booted out:

Glorious, no?

We don't know why St. Agnes has been demoted from the church proper to the basement:

I'm sure she doesn't mind. But please put her back upstairs. (Click to enlarge and see her lovely face.)

In keeping with the religious theme, this is something of a landmark in downtown Elmhurst, Illinois:

Click for a closer look at the awesomely tacky Hamburger Angel:

Proof for you youngsters that not everything in the 50s and 60s was like Mad Men.

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Well, at least he stimulated something!

MSNBC voters?

Your stimulus dollars hard at work:

The Labor Department paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal stimulus funds to a public relations firm to run more than 100 commercials touting the Obama administration’s “green training” job efforts on two MSNBC cable shows, records show.
The commercials ran on MSNBC on shows hosted by Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann in 2009, but the contract didn’t report any jobs created, according to records reviewed recently by The Washington Times.
Spending reports under the federal Recovery Act show $495,000 paid to McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations LLC, which the Labor Department hired to raise awareness “among employers and influencers about the [Job Corps] program’s existing and new training initiatives in high growth and environmentally friendly career areas” as well as spreading the word to prospective Job Corps enrollees.

You'd think the money would've been better spent on a spot in which voters not already in the tank for Obama would be watching. But that's government efficiency for ya: spend money needlessly shoring up voters who'd already vote for ya! No word yet on why taxpayer money is funding Obama's relection campaign. But the damn signs all over the roadway are another story (again, free adverts).

pjHusband was incredulous over this last night. But I reminded him of Obama's Chicago pol heritage. As long-time visitors to the Windy City, you get used to this:

Daley's name was plastered over every trashcan and on every airport kiosk. Free advertising on the taxpayer dime. Obama learned well!

Cross-posted at pjMom.

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Like taking candy from babies

Or snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Romney ahead in Michigan.

Romney ahead in Wisconsin.

Brown ahead of Fauxcahantas.

And now Cook flips Missouri from toss up to Democrat because the village idiot won't quit. It takes a special kind of stupid to lose the Senate when, you know, the repeal of Obamacare is at stake.  As Allahpundit notes, maybe it won't be so bad after all. And you'll be able to thank Mr. Akin:

Maybe ObamaCare won’t be so bad, guys. A couple of tweaks to IPAB, a little fine-tuning of those state insurance exchanges, and who knows? We might be able to duct-tape this boondoggle together and keep it aloft for a decade or two. If anyone can make it work, it’s President Romney, right?

Bashing my head against desk.

Cross-posted at pjMom.

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The law of unintended consequences: rise in infectious disease tied to plastic bag ban

Husband and I have debated this one, though I admit we never thought the rise in infectious disease would be measurable. Via HotAir, a fascinating look at the dirty problem associated with reusable grocery bags:

Liberals will have no problem arguing a bird or turtle's life is worth more than a human's because they do it all the time (Wesley J. Smith's "A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy" exposes the grotesque reality of the PETA position). But when children start dying en masse from cross-contamination that could have been so easily avoided by a cheap disposable bag, will some folks wake up? I wonder.

In full disclosure, I have plenty of cloth bags, though I never (ok, rarely) use them for groceries. I color-code our laundry by bag and shuffle it up and down narrow staircases to the laundry room and back to hanging on bedroom doors. Another functions as a great swim-class bag. But none carry raw meat or poultry, and it'll likely stay that way.

Cross-posted at politicaljunkieMom.

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Well, he can't discuss his record. So let's talk ... beer!

"Four more beers!" they cry. Details of the White House home brew piqued my husband's interest last night. "Why is this even a story?" he asked. Because they can't discuss his record. Shaggy dog (on the roof) stories ensue instead. The details, however, are interesting:

President Barack Obama has stocked up on a new all-American campaign prop — White House-brewed beer.
During his bus tour across the battleground state of Iowa, the president on Tuesday gave a bottle of the brew, known as White House Honey Ale, to a patron of a Knoxville, Iowa, coffee shop when the subject of beer came up.
While it was the first time the branded beer grabbed wide attention from the press corps on the campaign trail, a White House official said the president and first lady have made a habit of occasionally traveling with bottles of the beer made at a small brewery at the White House.
The beer, which comes in both a light and dark variety, is made by the White House chefs who use traditional beer-brewing methods.
The honey portion of the drink is taken from first lady Michelle Obama's garden beehive near the White House Kitchen Garden on the south lawn.
Taxpayers are not footing the bill for the beer, as both the cost of the equipment and the cost of brewing the beer is paid for by the Obamas personally, the official said.

Emphasis mine. All-American. President giving beer. Made by White House chefs. Tradition. Honey from Michelle's garden. How lovely. And they're footing their own bill for a change. (How odd). What's the kicker? Oh just wait for the conclusion:

"It's true, at the State Fair, instead of saying 'four more years,' they were saying, 'four more beers.' So I bought him four more beers. Told him he had to register to vote, though, to get one of the beers," Obama told a laughing crowd.

Isn't that illegal? I digress:

 Connecting with the beer drinkers' vote is a tactic not used by Obama's Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, a Mormon who does not drink alcohol.

This is why the Obamas are making such a big deal of the home brew. This is why they're travelling with bottles of beer: to make a rather subversive point about Romney's Mormonism. They could do it with coffee. Or soda. But beer is the most effective way to show how "out of touch" he is while they follow the "traditional All-American home brewing" methods.

I'm not fooled. But how many would be? What's next, a reporter pointing out that Romney wouldn't hold a beer summit (thank God)? Or the usual test pre-election, "With whom would you rather sit and have a beer?" would have to be hypothetical since, you know, Romney doesn't drink. How far will the media carry this? Maybe not as far as previously thought. 

Cross-posted at PoliticaljunkieMom Most recent posts here. Follow us on Twitter here. Amazon store here.

In my absence . . .

I'm not going to be around for a few days and have asked my friend PoliticaljunkieMom to toss some posts this way. (That is, if she has a chance to write anything between diaper changes. First things first.)

One item before I go, from Jim Geraghty:

Unemployment is 8.3 percent, we’re about two and a half months away from Election Day, the president hasn’t answered questions from the White House press corps in eight weeks… but today President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama sat down for an interview with… Entertainment Tonight.

The guy's not serious, except about keeping his sweet gig. One hopes voters will notice.

A propos of nothing, here's some Sinatra for the season:



See you soon.

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"Smashing America apart"

I don't know who wrote this, but, to quote my old mother, 'truer words were never spoke.' From a speech Romney gave Tuesday night:

“For the first time, most Americans believe that our best days are behind us. This is an election in which we should be talking about the path ahead, but you don’t hear any answers coming from President Obama’s re-election campaign. That’s because he’s intellectually exhausted, out of ideas, and out of energy. And so his campaign has resorted to diversions and distractions, to demagoguing and defaming others. This is an old game in politics; what’s different this year is that the president is taking things to a new low.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

“In 2008, Candidate Obama said, “if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters.” He said, “if you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.” And that, he told us, is how, “You make a big election about small things.”

“That was Candidate Obama describing the strategy that is the now the heart of his campaign.

“His campaign and his surrogates have made wild and reckless accusations that disgrace the office of the Presidency. Another outrageous charge came a few hours ago in Virginia. And the White House sinks a little bit lower.

“This is what an angry and desperate Presidency looks like.

“President Obama knows better, promised better and America deserves better.

“Over the last four years, this President has pushed Republicans and Democrats as far apart as they can go. And now he and his allies are pushing us all even further apart by dividing us into groups. He demonizes some. He panders to others. His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then cobble together 51 percent of the pieces.

Exactly right. The "new low" he was referring to, I think, is this:



But Romney could just as well be referring to version 2.0 of this ad.

Obama says he has no problem with Biden's bizarre and disgusting "chains" comment.

Didn't Obama reveal everything you needed to know about his judgment when he chose Biden as his running mate?

Just a heartbeat away

Rudy Giuliani has serious concerns about Joey B:

I mean, there’s a real fear if, God forbid, he ever had to be entrusted with the presidency, whether he really has the mental capacity to handle it.

Giuliani thinks he's just stupid, and it's certainly true that Biden's not the genius he pretends to be, but that's not his only problem. He's a vulgar, dishonest, self-aggrandizing buffoon who loves nothing as much as the sound of his own voice. (And he's also creepy. Remember this one?)

Anyway, Romney nailed it. More, please.

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Refuting MediScare lies

Fight Mediscaring with facts. From Andrew Biggs via James Pethokoukis:

First, no one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way.

Second, traditional Medicare fee-for-service would remain available for all. “Premium support”—that is, government funding of private insurance plans chosen by individuals—is an option for those who choose it. No senior would be forced out of the traditional Medicare program against his will.

And third, overall funding for Medicare under the Ryan-Wyden plan is scheduled to grow at the same rate as under President Obama’s proposals. Is this “gutting Medicare” and “ending Medicare as we know it”? In reality, it’s the market giving seniors cheaper, higher quality choices they can take if they wish, with the traditional program remaining an option.

Pass it on.

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Ryan: 'We can do this. We can turn this around.'

Excellent:

Hope and change, for real.

Also see John Hayward: A TALE OF TWO RALLIES: ROMNEY-RYAN DRAW OVERFLOW CROWD, WHILE OBAMA HALF-FILLS A ROOM IN CHICAGO

Meanwhile, President Obama was also on his home turf of Chicago, holding a rally and fundraiser at the Bridgeport Art Center. He couldn’t even get a thousand people to show up – the venue was only half full, even though tickets were available for as little as $51. Hilariously, the Obama campaign attempted to spin this disaster by claiming they only expected 850 people, so a thousand was a huge success. There were more than a thousand people in line to buy bratwurst at the Romney-Ryan rally.

Ouch.

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GOP: The Party of Math?

Perhaps that's too much to hope for. But I'd support it wholeheartedly. Reality fans have got to love this shirt:

(Cafe Press has more stuff here.)
Also this:

Paul Ryan represent Obama's most horrifying nightmare: math.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 11, 2012

Tim Carney:

Math is kryptonite to these people.

Yes, but I'd rather not think of Obama and company as supermen. How about vampires, with math as sunlight? The truth about entitlements can't be endured by the Dems, so they continually resort to lies and misdirection. Back to Carney:

Ryan's budget would not change anything about Medicare for people over age 54 or anyone younger who wants to go onto traditional Medicare. Ryan's plan, crafted with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden -- who earns gushing praise from self-styled wonks on the Left as a serious legislator (which he is) -- merely allows some people to opt instead for a voucherized version of Medicare.

So Democrats assert that Ryan-Wyden would "end Medicare as we know it," because any modification of any existing policy would "end" that policy "as we know it."

This slippery charge is Team Obama's standard rhetorical tack: Say something clearly misleading, but with one potential interpretation that could be construed as not a lie.

The Democratic alternative to Ryan's Medicare reform, meanwhile is, well, nothing.

Paul Ryan isn't really going to push Granny off the cliff, but the cliff is real, and we're headed straight for it:

The "end Medicare as we know it" mantra highlights two ways in which it is the Democratic Party that is deeply unserious.

First, it echoes Obama's mendacity. Second, it reflects the party's irresponsible insistence on looking the other way while driving our government full speed toward the cliff of insolvency.

Read the rest of Carney's piece, along with NRO's The Return of Mediscare, and pass them on.

I'm thinking it would make sense to require voters to pass a little math test, or actually an arithmetic test, as in 1+1=2, but I know that's an elitist/racist suggestion. So how about at least requiring our elected representatives, cabinet appointees, and Treasury officials to demonstrate, through some basic computation, that they're at least on speaking terms with reality?

PS: Wouldn't you love to see Obama's math grades?
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Also see Ed Morrissey: Video: Romney, Ryan play offense on Medicare in 60 Minutes appearance
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Another from Jim Geraghty: Invasion of the Entitlement Crisis Deniers
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Ryan (and Romney) in Manassas

We didn't make it to the Manassas rally yesterday but Stacy McCain was there:

The next polls you see out of Virginia . . . Well, look, the “gender gap” will evaporate instantly now that Paul Ryan’s on the ticket. Trust me on this — chicks dig him. It was like Sinatra with a crowd of bobby soxers at the Paramount in 1944. Elvis at the Overton Park bandshell in Memphis in 1956. Total swoonsville. As I explained it on Twitter:

By all accounts, the crowd was large and enthusiastic:

Oops, wrong picture. Here's one from UPI:

The overflow crowd swamped the downtown area and, according to Twitter, lined the streets cheering and waving "like a parade" as the campaign bus rolled off.

By the way, when was Andrea Mitchell appointed the spokesperson for suburban moms? Doug Powers:

After Mitt Romney announced his choice of Paul Ryan today, NBC Chief White House Spokeswoman Correspondent Andrea Mitchell took the the baton handoff from the Obama administration for her leg of the “war on women” relay:

Andrea Mitchell loses her voice while reacting to the Paul Ryan speech: “This is a base election. This is not a pick for suburban moms, this is not a pick for women.”

And then Doug goes there:

Hey, if women don’t mind Mrs. Alan Greenspan speaking on their behalf about what they find appealing, that’s their business, but I think many of them will object.

Oh dear. Well, there's no accounting for taste. But it's easy to explain why Paul Ryan is a great choice. Stacy quotes Michelle Malkin and it's worth repeating here:

Paul Ryan is fresh, young, energetic, smart, courageous, and ready for prime time.
Paul Ryan is a policy wonk AND a front-line warrior whose budget and long-term entitlement reforms have the entire Dem-Soros-lapdog media machine unhinged.
Paul Ryan is ready to fight false media narratives.
Paul Ryan is battle-tested against the White House.
Paul Ryan won’t cut and run when the going gets tough.

And Ryan gets the urgency of our fiscal crisis. He needs to hammer on that from now until November 6th.

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Many thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.
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VP nominee Paul Ryan, Barack Obama's natural enemy; updated

The app has done its thing and it's official: Romney picks Ryan!

Yes, I'm happy. Paul Ryan is the guy who understands the urgency of putting the brakes on our national hurtle toward the fiscal cliff, and hence, is Obama's natural enemy. See Peter Ferrara's April '12 column, Why Obama Hates Paul Ryan and my post on same, Obama's tax agenda, in which I concluded:

Truth is, at best, incidental to the Obama campaign, and in most cases a frightening liability. With no record of accomplishments to run on, this is what he's got. Peter Ferrara makes the case that Paul Ryan is Obama's natural enemy. Romney would be wise to beg Ryan to join him on the ticket.

But I didn't think Mitt had it in him. Husband and I expected him to go with Dull or Duller. What a wonderful surprise.

See also, Hey Girl . . .

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Watch the announcement live here.

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Christian Adams: Ryan is "the perfect pick."

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Watch my Twitter feed for further gushings and exclamations.

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Romney and Ryan

A couple of good pieces on Romney and Ryan:

The Ryan Way by Robert Costa:

According to Romney insiders, Romney deeply appreciated Ryan’s willingness to privately share his critique of the campaign during the heated Republican primary, where Romney often struggled to make his case. As he watched from afar, long before he endorsed, Ryan drafted a series of detailed strategy and policy advisories, and discussed them with Romney over the phone. For Romney, those corporate-style memos made a lasting impression — and catapulted Ryan into Romney’s circle, where he has remained since.

“Both men are intelligent and very empirically minded, driven by facts,” says Peter Wehner, a friend of Ryan’s and a former Bush and Reagan administration official. “When he looks at Ryan, Romney probably sees somebody like himself, a person he’d want at his side in the business world or the political world. They approach complicated problems the same way.”

Since Romney’s veep search has been hush-hush, no one knows whether Ryan’s budding alliance with Romney will put him on the Republican ticket. But if Romney’s personnel practices — at Bain and on the campaign trail — are any indication, it would make sense that Ryan is a leading candidate for the job. 

Read the rest. And from Katrina Trinko, 'The Mitt Nobody Sees':

Mitt Romney may not be the worst human being ever, reports the New York Times: [. . .]  Romney has a long history of helping people out without fanfare, and it’s interesting how he hasn’t tried to exploit that history at all for the campaign. (The Romney campaign wouldn’t comment to the Times on this story, which seems par for the course: Romney just won’t highlight his personal good deeds.)

Read on to learn of his good deeds. Could it be that Romney possesses that rarest of qualities in a politician, humility? Milton Friedman on that essential virtue:

Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so? We may argue with him, seek to persuade him that he is wrong, but are we entitled to use coercion to prevent him from doing what he chooses to do? Is there not always the possibility that he is right and we are wrong? Humility is the distinguishing characteristic of the believer in freedom, arrogance of the paternalist. [Capitalism and Freedom, p. 188.]

Amen. Coercion and arrogance are the hallmarks of the Obama presidency.

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Tweet of the day

. . . so far:

Before Mitt kills again. RT @barackobama: The election is in 88 days—convince a friend to volunteer with you this weekend
— Daniel Foster (@DanFosterNRO) August 10, 2012

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When Barry Met Sandy

In Denver yesterday with his girl-power sidekick Sandra Fluke, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to free sex, otherwise known as the Free Contraceptives for Votes Initiative HHS mandate:

“I think there is one person who should make decisions on your health care, and that person is you,” he continued. “I don’t think a college student in Colorado Springs should have to choose between textbooks or the preventive care she needs.”

And the crowd goes wild!

Oops -- sorry. Wrong picture. Here's Sandra with her knight in shining armor:

Gluttons for punishment can view the 30-minute pander to wimmin here. There's no doubt the Obama campaign helped write Fluke's remarks. The "Obama's got our backs and we've got his" shtick, a favorite of our Ciceronian president, is a dead giveaway. Not surprisingly, Fluke's remarks were predicated on the fundamental war-on-women whopper, actually believed only by the most vacuous among us, that access to contraceptives is being threatened. (And hey, did you know that "women's rights" can be "rolled back in the blink on an eye?" Confused -- does that mean girl-power isn't real?)

Another nominee for the biggest lie of the event:

“We worked with Catholic hospitals and universities to find a solution that protects both religious liberty and a woman’s health,” Obama falsely claimed. “We’ve made sure churches and other houses of worship don’t have to provide or pay for it.”

Insert primal scream here. The "accommodation" was a cynical farce. George Weigel:

The initial announcement of the mandate seemed based on the assumption that the White House could play divide-and-conquer, peeling Catholic progressives away from their religious leaders. The “accommodation,” trotted out when the original strategy didn’t work, seemed to assume that the bishops could be rolled — and indeed would welcome an opportunity to return to the administration’s good graces. When that, too, failed, a great silence ensued; and despite the efforts of the bishops’ staff to engage the administration in a serious exploration of Catholic concerns raised by the mandate, nothing of the sort has happened.

The president proceeded to make a fairly convincing argument for dumping himself in favor of Romney. If only we could believe Mitt were as "bad" as Obama paints him:

“He joined the far right to support a bill that would allow an employer to deny contraceptive coverage to their employees,” Obama said. “He said he’d ‘get rid of’ Planned Parenthood.”

“He said that he’d take the Affordable Care Act and ‘kill it dead’ on the first day of his presidency,” Obama complained about Romney’s stance supporting the reversal of Obamacare, which funds abortions.

A palate cleanser from George Neumayr, from a March column:

Let's cut the PC crap: college and law school students who demand that priests and nuns finance their fornication deserve searing satirical treatment. This is the sorriest collection of arrogant snots in the history of academia.

Change that last word to "government" and it could be applied to the Obama administration, too, no?

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Steyn: The Mark of Mitt

The great Mark Steyn comments on That Ad:

. . . it’s not just that Mitt Romney hasn’t paid any taxes since 1975 and that Bain Capital is the planet’s largest distributor of E. coli which it manufactures in petri dishes offshored to Mitt’s safe deposit box in the Cayman Islands, but that Mitt will kill your loved ones five years after his minions lay you off. Just because he can. He doesn’t have to meet you. You might show no outward signs of ill health. You might even have a job and health insurance. But you bear the Mark of Mitt, and decades later when you keel over and expire it’ll be because he once laid off your brother, or your cousin, or your hairdresser’s sister, or someone who once heard something from someone who knows Harry Reid.

You are, of course, expected to read the rest.

Along those lines, this Twitter exchange from yesterday:

@heminator Obviously a cunningly executed plan on Romney's part!
— Pundette (@pundette) August 7, 2012

.@pundette Right -- if Romney hadn't waited seven years to kill that guy's wife it would have been too obvious. Fiendish!
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) August 7, 2012

Also this.

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About that ad; Update: Wife had insurance?

This might be a new low:



A few pieces of information that weren't included in the ad:

- Romney left Bain in 1999.
- The steel plant was closed in 2001.
- The man's wife died in 2006.

So it's absurd on the face of it. We can excuse the man who lost his wife, I suppose, but not the guys who used him to make this shameful ad. Quin Hillyer:

Longtime Obama political honcho Bill Burton, now head of a main pro-Obama super-PAC, has the single sickest, vilest, most reprehensible ad since the NAACP blamed G.W. Bush for the truck-dragging deaths of a Texas black man. The ad effectively blames Romney for the cancer death of the wife of a former worker at a Bain Capital-rescued steel mill that later closed down.

Perhaps somebody should punch Burton in the nose. And then spit in his face. Or, at least, that would be the moral equivalent of what Burton has done to Romney. If Obama doesn't disavow the ad, and soon, he should be held to account for it -- not because he authorized it, but because it so violates the tone that he repeatedly promised that he must weigh in to rebuke his own close associate, if he is to maintain any pose of basic human decency.

I don't see that happening. Do you?

(Read the rest.)

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Even CNN acknowledges that the ad is fundamentally dishonest, and they uncover an additional lie: Mrs. Soptic had a job, and health insurance, after her husband lost his at the steel mill. She left her job a year or two later after an injury. Transcript here.

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It's now Wednesday morning and the ad still hasn't been pulled. Did its creators not bother to check the facts in Mr. Soptic's sad but highly misleading story? Or, in their eagerness to exploit his apparent bitterness toward and irrational fixation on Mitt Romney as the cause of his grief, were they, as the man characterizes Romney at the end of the ad, "not concerned"? 

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Many thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.

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Edited to add the word "apparent."

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Bryan Preston: What's one more lie?

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Linked by the great Mark Steyn: it's the Mark of Mitt!

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Obama's latest campaign weapon: Sandra Fluke?

Really? Yes, really:

Noted contraception activist Sandra Fluke will be introducing President Barack Obama at a campaign stop in Denver, Colo. Wednesday according to the Denver Post.

Fluke is expected to introduce Obama in downtown Denver at the Auraria Campus, during a campaign stop centered on his economic plans, the outlet noted. Fluke’s appearance will likely add a second dynamic, with the campaign, in recent months, attempting to highlight differences between Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s stances on women’s issues to Obama’s left-leaning approach.

Fluke endorsed Obama in June.

“Obama is committed to rebuilding our economy upon the values of fairness and opportunity and the belief that all Americans, both men and women, must have the rights they deserve,” Fluke wrote in a CNN op-ed. “That’s why I’m proud to endorse his re-election.”

Pardon my skepticism, but will the charisma-free "reproductive justice" advocate really help Obama's chances? Seems to me the radical feminists who admire Fluke are going to vote for Obama anyway. The rest of us (if we remember who she is, that is) are just annoyed by her.

And does the president really want to remind everyone of the coercive HHS mandate that gave Ms. Fluke her fifteen minutes of fame? As of August 1, Catholic business owners are commanded by the government to provide their employees with insurance that covers not only the devices and drugs (including morning-after pills) upon which a modern young woman's, er . . . health depend, but also "free" elective sterilization surgeries (even for young women). The mandate forces employers to choose between their livelihoods and their consciences, punishing those who follow their religious convictions with Draconian, business-killing fines. I haven't been paying close enough attention to say whether Romney has been hammering on the HHS mandate, but if he hasn't, he must. It's as un-American as blustering two-bit-thug mayors threatening to ban Christian-run businesses from their failing, violence-ridden cities. (But Romney's not talking about that, either.)

If Ms. Fluke and President Obama want to try to reignite her glorious victimhood at the hands of Rush Limbaugh, I guess they can try, but that intentionally-set fire seems to have burned out, and the campaign has moved from the sham War on Women to a variety of sham Wars on Whatever, including Romney-as-felon, Romney-as-tax-cheat (the Obama administration ought to be experts on that one), Romney-as-reverse-Robin Hood (yes, really), and even a sorry little War on Rich People with Horses.

They'll wage war on anything to avoid the real issue: Obama's abysmal failure as president. Here are a couple of handy items to pass on to people who are just starting to pay attention: Mark Steyn's brief but to the point proof that Obama has failed, dramatically, by his own standards, and Jennifer Rubin's Question time for Obama.

Well, no, he doesn't actually answer questions anymore. But he still hops around the country schmoozing with the beautiful people and grabbing up fistfuls of their money.

(We're waiting for the perfect Obama vehicle: A celebrity golf fundraising tournament. All participants would have to be sworn to secrecy, of course; his golf scores are as closely guarded as his college transcripts, and the president wouldn't want it getting out that he's as lousy at golfing as he is at leading.)

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