“President Obama leaves event promoting clean energy in a motorcade of 22 fossil-fueled vehicles:”

On January 26, 2012, President Obama visited a Las Vegas UPS plant. Stimulus subsidy for said UPS plant to purchase natural-gas-powered trucks: 5.6 million dollars. Stimulus subsidy for North Las Vegas green energy plant that laid off 200 workers yesterday: 5.9 million dollars. Using taxpayer dollars to leave an event promoting clean-energy vehicles in a motorcade of twenty-two fossil-fueled vehicles: Priceless.

It’s time to end all energy subsidizes, and let average Americans, like the President does, select the fuel they want, free of government interference.

For Obama, it’s just like a weekend jaunt at Martha’s Vineyard. Still though, they got out of the driveway at least; clearly the Oba-cade is making progress with its driver’s lessons. Recall this post from May of last year:

What goes around…

Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle.

“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

…Goes aground:

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We know why Obama enjoys being president; why do the other candidates? As Seth Mandel writes at Commentary, “There’s an episode of the hit TV show ‘The West Wing’ in which the president’s likely re-election opponent is asked why he wants to be president and flubs the question. The president’s advisers enjoy a good laugh at their opponent’s mistake–until they realize their boss also doesn’t know why he wants to be president:”

This is not to suggest there are no differences between Romney and Obama or between Gingrich and Obama. But there is a puzzling incoherence. I like the spirit behind Gingrich’s resuscitation of the space program. But it’s unrealistic to suggest a permanent American moon colony won’t cost the federal government a fortune.

Gingrich criticizes the president for spending too much while trying to do too much and then proposes radical changes that would cost billions, probably trillions. And as for Romney, in one sentence he criticizes the president for demonizing success and then sheepishly suggests maybe he shouldn’t have been able to make or vastly increase his personal fortune.

They all want to be president. But they all need to make a better case for why they want to be president.

Obama’s current channeling Groucho Marx’s Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff character in Horse Feathers — even before he knows who the GOP candidate will be, whoever he is, he’s against him. But then, the antediluvian Obama’s the very definition of a reactionary, so he’s got that going for him, at least.

Actually, given their inability to articulate how they differ on policy, these have to be the least inspiring presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle, since, well, 2008. Is it too late for a do-over?

Related: Jay Cost adds, “Somebody else – somebody with the ability to make the case for reform in a sober and courageous manner – should jump into this race. And not just to keep Obama from a second term. If 2012 is a decisive election – then we need a candidate with the courage and rectitude to make the choice clear to the voters, so that once in office he has the mandate to fix this mess.”

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No word yet how that will impact schlong pix uploaded by Congressional Democrats, but Reuters reports today:

Twitter gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with “certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.”

A Twitter spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the blog.

“Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world,” the Twitter blog said.

Twitter’s decision to begin censoring content represents a significant departure from its policy just one year ago, when anti-government protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries coordinated mass demonstrations through on the social network and, in the process, thrust Twitter’s disruptive potential into the global spotlight.

As the revolutions brewed last January, Twitter signaled that it would take a hands-off approach to censoring content in a blog post entitled “The Tweets Must Flow.”

“We do not remove Tweets on the basis of their content,” the blog post read. “Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users’ right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed.”

And last year, Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray declared that the company was “from the free speech wing of the free speech party.”

In the interest of transparency, Twitter said Thursday, it has built a mechanism to inform users in the event that a Tweet is being blocked.

I’m sure Twitter’s nascent attempt at censorship has nothing at all to do with this Wall Street Journal report from late December:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has made a $300 million investment in Twitter Inc., expanding his media empire into social-media sites and giving the Saudi billionaire a stake in an online forum that was widely used by activists in this year’s Arab uprisings.

The investment was made several months ago when existing Twitter shareholders sold $400 million of shares, according to people familiar with the matter. At the time, Twitter also raised $400 million from a direct investment led by Russia-based DST Global, known for its investments in social media companies including Facebook Inc. The identities of other investors weren’t disclosed.

In an emailed statement from Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding Co., Prince Alwaleed stressed both the investment potential and growing clout of the short-messaging social network in announcing the purchase, which he said was part of a drive “to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact.”

San Francisco-based Twitter, whose investors include several venture-capital firms, was valued by analysts in October at about $8.4 billion, suggesting that Prince Alwaleed’s stake is equivalent to 3.6% of the company.

* * * * *

Prince Alwaleed has focused his investments on banks, hotels and media companies, building sizable stakes in companies such as Citigroup Inc., News Corp., Apple Inc. and Time Warner Inc. News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. He is also developing a new Arabic-language satellite-news channel with Bloomberg LP.

Is a $300 million investment enough to get your own kill switch?

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A couple of weeks ago, Seth Mandel wrote at Commentary that with former White House chief of staff Bill Daley’s return to Chicago, the rest of the original Obama White House staffers are like ‘rats eager to leave the Obama Concordia:

The New York Times tries admirably to parrot the administration line, calling Daley’s departure a “distracting shake-up in a White House that has prided itself on a lack of internal drama, with a tightly knit circle of loyal senior advisers playing a steadying role.” But the paper is forced to give away the game later on in the story, revealing the Obama White House for what it is: the Hotel California of presidential administrations:

While the president said he asked Mr. Daley to reconsider his decision, he did not apply the kind of pressure he brought to bear on Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has for several months been eager to return to New York.

The Times is right; Geithner has been begging to leave. And far from being chock full of “loyal senior advisers,” the White House is made up of people trying desperately to get out before their term is up (Daley, Geithner) and comically disastrous hires to which Obama has shown a generous amount of loyalty (Eric Holder, former press secretary Bob Gibbs).

And reading between the lines, Geithner is still eager to escape, the L.A. Times reports today:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner says he’s “confident” he won’t be serving a second term, even if President Obama is reelected.

“He’s not going to ask me to stay on, I’m pretty confident,” Geithner told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday. “I’m confident he’ll be president. But I’m also confident he’s going to have the privilege of having another secretary of the Treasury.”

Cabinet secretaries are rarely expected to serve a second term, and Geithner is no exception. As the last remaining member of Obama’s original economic team, Geithner has fought back rumors of his departure before.

Unfortunately — if not at all surprisingly — the L.A. Times doesn’t echo the New York Times’ report, which states that Geithner’s only staying on because he’s been pressured to do so. Keep rockin’!

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Found via Ace of Spades guest-blogger Maetenloch:

How Deep in the Elite Cultural Bubble Are You?

So Charles Murray of the AEI has a new book out, Coming Apart, where he claims that there’s now a great cultural divide separating American upper and lower classes.

America is coming apart. For most of our nation’s history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America’s core cultural institutions.

And to see exactly how isolated you are in the upper class bubble they have a helpful quiz.

I came off as much less insular than I was afraid I would:

How Thick Is Your Bubble? Guest Score » 10 out of 20 (50% ) Result On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 9 and 12.In other words, even if you’re part of the new upper class, you’ve had a lot of exposure to the rest of America. Quiz School Take this quiz & get your score

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get a new set of spats to go with my striped pants and morning coat. I’m really falling down in the snobbery department.

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Back in the early days of the Blogosphere, bloggers were often characterized as “linkers versus thinkers.” The latter used their blogging platforms to ruminate on the day’s events via 5,0000 word essays; the former sent their readers off to what is hopefully expert opinion on a particularly topic.

But on rare occasions, we can catch the best of the “experts” admitting there’s much they don’t know.

Donald Rumsfeld received plenty of catcalls for his tongue-twisting formulation in 2002 for saying that, “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know.”

Many of the loudest hisses came from Beltway elitists who strike a pose of omniscience. (And then are consistently surprised whenever history doesn’t move in their direction.) But in the past few years, there have been several instances of old media elitists — who often had one or both feet actively in politics at some point in their lives — admitting there’s plenty that they themselves don’t know.

Most recently, there’s DNC/GE spokesman Chris Matthews who’s shocked! shocked! that there’s gambling going on inside Rick’s Cafe. Err, sorry, that there’s insider trading going on in Congress, despite Peter Schweizer’s recent best-selling Throw Them All Out, the myriad articles that it received in on both sides of the political spectrum, and the profile it received on 60 Minutes. Not to mention Matthews himself serving on the staffs of four Democratic members of Congress, and as an aide to then-Democrat Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill:

In September of 2010, Karl of Hot Air spotted this whopper from another liberal elitist whose resume includes being a former cohost of CNN’s Crossfire, a former opinion page editor at the L.A. Times, and a contributor to the Washington Post, Slate, Time and the Politico:

Credit Michael Kinsley for a little honesty:

I’m sitting here in a pile of reports and studies by think tanks, public-policy schools, the Office of Management and Budget, and self-appointed grandee fiscal crusaders. They all make the same, tiresomely familiar point: that this can’t go on. ***

There are a dozen ways to look at the national debt and the annual government deficit, and they all lead to varying degrees of panic. What’s especially scary about our fiscal situation is that everybody knows the facts and concedes the implication, but nobody is doing anything about it ***

And the national debt is just a fraction of the problem. State and local governments, unlike the national government in Washington, cannot print money, and many states have constitutions that forbid them to run a deficit. Nevertheless, they will be losing, together, about $140 billion this year. ***

Debt is everywhere you look. Here’s a short inside piece in The New York Times Magazine about state and local unfunded pension obligations for retired employees. They add up to between $1 trillion and $3 trillion. Until that article, I had given no thought whatsoever to shortfalls in state employee pension funds. You?

Well, yeah. And Matt Welch points out that Reason magazine has been all over the problem. And if you’re reading a conservative blog like this, you probably knew about it from Reason, or the Weekly Standard, or the American Spectator, Fox News, City Journal, the CATO Institute, National Review, the Heritage Foundation, Rush Limbaugh or any of the other right-leaning media that have been discussing it for years, but prominently for about a year.

I guess you can excuse some of the confusion from Matthews and Kinsley, given that the country revolves around a document that “was written more than 100 years ago” and is therefore “the text is confusing” to those reading it.

In that respect, perhaps this quote from a liberal elitist in 1992 is likely the most honest thing he’s ever said:

As Noemie Emery concluded in the fall of 2010, today’s Ivy League/Beltway meritocracy “has created an ‘elite’ without merit. In everyone’s eyes but its own.”  Only rarely can you catch them admitting what their known-unknowns actually are.

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“Does liberalism embody the military virtues? Is martial virtue the highest stage of progressivism?”

Those are questions that Bill Kristol asks at the Weekly Standard:

Well, let’s think about an America that looked more like the military. That America would have a culture that’s at times tough and even harsh. It would have a mode of organization that’s strictly hierarchical and at times unforgiving. It would feature a regimen that weeds out those not up to the task and subordinate individual comfort to the achievement of a difficult mission. But that isn’t the America Obama wants to bring within reach. That isn’t the kind of America Obama’s policies seek to produce. Obama’s America is soft, understanding, forgiving, and entitled. But that America doesn’t work so well, or sell so well, anymore. So now Obama pretends his America is the troops’ America.

Near the end of his speech, the president claimed that “Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops.” What can we learn? That ”when you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails.” What Obama doesn’t say is this: It’s not just that you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. It’s also that you endure tough and demanding training, or the mission fails. You subordinate your own wishes, or the mission fails. You wash out many of those who wish to serve, or the mission fails. You insist on fitness and discipline and good character, or the mission fails. You do away with any sense of entitlement, or the mission fails. But Obama isn’t interested in the truth about why a mission succeeds or fails. He’s interested in using the prestige of the military to justify the nanny state.

Our liberal president claims to want to help us all “get each other’s backs,” just as military missions only succeed if “you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.” But welfare state liberalism is all about scratching each other’s backs; nanny state liberalism is all about rubbing each other’s backs; and entitlement state liberalism is all about stroking each other’s backs. None is about protecting each other’s backs—let alone driving away our enemies and turning around to bravely face the future. The fact is that if the military is in some respects an example for us, it’s not an example that speaks in favor of contemporary liberalism.

But it does speak to the origins of an earlier form of liberalism, and it’s the latest reminder that Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism was meant as a warning, not a how-to guide. As Jonah noted in several places in his book, and reiterated to Salon magazine four years ago (in an article titled, “We’re all fascists now,” foreshadowing a similar headline from a rival leftwing publication a year later):

What appealed to the Progressives about militarism was what William James [called in 1906] this moral equivalent of war. It was that war brought out the best in society, as James put it, that it was the best tool then known for mobilization … That is what is fascistic about militarism, its utility as a mechanism for galvanizing society to join together, to drop their partisan differences, to move beyond ideology and get with the program. And liberalism today is, strictly speaking, pretty pacifistic. They’re not the ones who want to go to war all that much. But they’re still deeply enamored with this concept of the moral equivalent of war, that we should unite around common purposes. Listen to the rhetoric of Barack Obama, it’s all about unity, unity, unity, that we have to move beyond our particular differences and unite around common things, all of that kind of stuff. That remains at the heart of American liberalism, and that’s what I’m getting at.

And this is far from the first time Obama has proven himself to be a remarkably antediluvian thinker. Not to mention echoing sentiments uttered a generation earlier by Jimmy Carter.

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“Some said the state of our union was getting stronger, while others said it was getting weaker,  but I was getting bin Laden.”

– PBHO¹ at the SOTE², as neatly summarized in a single sentence by Prof. William A. Jacobson. (I actually did a quick Google — it really does sound like something Barry¹ would say to a crowd, doesn’t it?”

1. Apologies for the non-MSNBC-approved terminology there.

2. State of the Election speech. But for Obama¹, aren’t they all?

Update: Boil that boilerplate! (Video moved to top of page to not conflict with ad.)

Related: You can answer this question for the president in the coming months.

More: Obama pulls trigger on January Surprise: a mass refinancing plan for U.S. mortgages. What could go wrong?

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He should have demanded a quid pro quo to get President Obama to first release something hitherto unknown — or at least talked up the many “known-unknowns” about the president in interviews. But now that the documents are out, Guy Benson at Townhall reviews the numbers, and the spin from the left, and concludes, “Romney Paid $6.2 Million in Taxes Over Last Two Years, Gave Even More To Charity:”

Here’s another detail that Lefties won’t want to focus on, conveniently buried in the penultimate paragraph of Reuters’ write-up:

Regardless, the emerging picture was of a man of great means who contributes mightily to charity. The documents showed he and his wife contributed $7 million in charity over the two years, much of it going to his Mormon church.

So between taxes and charity, the Romney’s paid $13.2 million since 2010 — roughly one-third of their income.  How will the media treat these numbers?  Blogger Exurban Jon has it about right:

The headline should be that Romney donated 15% of his income [to charity]. Instead it’ll be that he “only” paid 14% to almighty government.

Right, because private charity isn’t the State, and the State is king.  Hey, remember this?

Read the whole thing.

Update: “John Kerry and his wife paid a lower effective tax rate in 2003 than Romney did last year.”

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“There’s Hawkeye and Trapper John back in Korea. I never did like those guys. They fancied themselves super-decent and super-tolerant, but actually had no use for anyone who was not exactly like them. What they were was super-pleased with themselves. In truth, they were the real bigots, and phony at that. I always preferred Frank Burns, the stuffy, unpopular doc, a sincere bigot.”

– Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome, via Terry Teachout.

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Scheduled for release to the Kindle and in analog dead tree form in April — the 17th, not the 1st surprisingly — is The Occupy Handbook, complied by Janet Byrne and published by the Hachette Book Group, the second largest publisher in the world, according to Wikipedia.

The book’s Amazon description claims:

Analyzing the movement’s deep-seated origins in questions that the country has sought too long to ignore, some of the greatest economic minds and most incisive cultural commentators – from Paul Krugman, Robin Wells, Michael Lewis, Robert Reich, Amy Goodman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gillian Tett, Scott Turow, Bethany McLean, Brandon Adams, and Tyler Cowen to prominent labor leaders and young, cutting-edge economists and financial writers whose work is not yet widely known – capture the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon in all its ragged glory, giving readers an on-the-scene feel for the movement as it unfolds while exploring the heady growth of the protests, considering the lasting changes wrought, and recommending reform. A guide to the occupation, THE OCCUPY HANDBOOK is a talked-about source for understanding why 1% of the people in America take almost a quarter of the nation’s income and the long-term effects of a protest movement that even the objects of its attack can find little fault with.

Since it’s likely still in pre-production, for completion’s sake, here are some helpful suggestions to flesh-out the book:

• Which police cars have the smoothest surface to excrete against.
• What not to say to the media when you’re interviewed after an altercation with the police.
• Why David Duke totally digs OWS.
• The camp rapist: misunderstood soul?
• How to be the first protest dedicated to preserving the status quo.
• How my $90,000 in student loans for a degree in deconstructionist lesbian poetry led me to spend 93 days sleeping in a tent in downtown New York.
• #Occupymobiusloop: How to run up your student debt even more studying #OWS.
• Occupy Your Backyard! It’s not just for ten year olds playing GI Joe anymore.
• How to win friends and influence people by terrorizing minimum wage bank tellers.
• Those who attempt to appease you are simply showing weakness — attack! — whether it’s 1939 or 2011.
• Radical Chic: look sharp — look Soviet!
• Left-wing anti-Semitism: the hot new trend for the 21st century.
• The Bible: Like the Constitution, it’s over 100 years old and outdated. Best to discard by throwing it at your enemies.
• Churches too are part of the 1 percent. Steal with impunity.
• JFK was a plutocratic One Percenter. Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you!
• If we’re so hip, how come the people supporting us are so damn old?
• Why is a prominent spokesman for General Electric supporting OWS?
• If we’re so radical and dangerous, why do establishment media sources like the New York Times, a major publishing house, and Time magazine think we’re so cool?

I’m sure there are numerous other topics that could help make this title the best it can be, so feel free to add yours in the comments. Or maybe just occupy the Hachette Book Group’s New York offices, since they’re giving such protests their blessing by going all in with them.

(Headline suggested by the eminent Abbot H. Hoffman.)

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“Remember just a couple of years ago when all the ‘experts’ were telling us that exploring for oil was futile because it would take at least ten years to bring it to market? Now that the oil has actually been produced in places like Alberta and North Dakota, they’re reduced to denying the construction of pipelines.”

– Instapundit reader Trevor Dahl.

Plus a few more words on the same subject from Ezra Levant:

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Maureen Dowd is not happy with The One, Charles C. W. Cooke writes at the Corner:

In her Saturday New York Times column, Maureen Dowd offers her most biting critique of President Obama since his inauguration:

Times have been bad and sad, and The One did not turn out to be a messiah, just a mortal politician who ruefully jokes that his talent is hitting the “sweet spot” where he makes no one happy, neither allies nor opponents.

I had expected such a lamentation to be followed immediately by a broadside against the Right; perhaps with the typical Reid-esque charges of obstructionism, or cynicism, or “politics,” or anything that implies that culpability lies outside of the West Wing. Instead, she trains her fire on the president and keeps it steadily there. The thrust of Dowd’s argument is that the president feels “disappointed” by us. An “introvert,” he shares Jimmy Carter’s incredulity that our boisterous democracy does not bend happily to his definition of the rational. And so, hurt by America’s failure to appreciate his brilliance, he and Michelle have become physically and emotionally reclusive, preferring the company of a small clique of friends that recognize his gifts:

The portrait of the first couple in Jodi Kantor’s new book, “The Obamas,” bristles with aggrievement and the rational president’s disdain for the irrational nature of politics, the press and Republicans. Despite what his rivals say, the president and the first lady do believe in American exceptionalism — their own, and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated.

We disappointed them.

Dowd writes,”The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had a presidency with all the joy of a root canal.” I’m pretty sure she called him “boy” in the first draft, though. Fortunately, as Don Surber adds:

Don’t worry. Only 364 shopping days left until he is gone with an anemic legacy of being a soft leader in tough times. Despite his failed $787 billion stimulus, his refusal to work with Republicans, and a foreign policy that is turning the Middle East and North Africa over to Iran, he thinks he is too good for us.

So does Jonathan Alter, writing in the Washington Post:

Obama’s lofty speeches during the 2008 campaign led even his detractors to admit that he is a gifted orator. Some critics try to minimize his skill by saying he relies on a teleprompter — a ridiculous charge considering that he often writes big chunks of his speeches and often speaks off-the-cuff.

That said, there are few examples of Obama’s speeches actually moving popular opinion. That’s because he speaks in impressive paragraphs, not memorable sentences. He is allergic to sound bites, and that keeps him from effectively framing his goals and achievements.

The roots of this allergy may lie in his famous Philadelphia speech on race in 2008, which followed the revelations of incendiary comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The speech lacked memorable lines, but it was a big hit. I believe it convinced Obama that the public could absorb complex ideas without bumper sticker lines. He was wrong.

Or as James Taranto paraphrases on Twitter, “Obama isn’t a gifted public speaker because the public is stupid.” The public — why does it have to bipolar? Soaring to lofty heights when it does what the MSM instruct it to do; so boorish when it fails its journalistic betters.

And finally, one of the more infamous rubes has a rare moment of clarity, as Spencer Ackerman lists “Four Contradictions In Obama’s Defense Plan:”

Sometimes the analysis in the strategy suggests a policy choice that the strategy actually disavows. Sometimes it walks back controversial points. Sometimes it makes pledges that sound sensible at first blush — but don’t actually make sense the more you think about them.

No word yet if Ackerman assuaged his guilt by declaring a random conservative pundit racist or suggesting tossing him through a plate glass window.

Elsewhere in the world of the JournoList, the Washington Post’s ombudman goes into full cheat-and-retreat mode:

Deborah Howell, Post ombudsman from 2005 through 2008, said at the end of her tenure that “some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt [at The Post] are valid.”

I won’t quibble with her conclusion. I think she was right. I read all of The Post’s lengthier, meatier stories on Obama published from October 2006 through Election Day 2008. That was about 120 stories, and tens of thousands of words, including David Maraniss’s 10,000-word profile about Obama’s Hawaii years, which I liked.

I think there was way too little coverage of his record in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate, for example, with one or two notably good exceptions. But there were hard-hitting stories too, even a very tough one on Michelle Obama’s job at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

And that’s what The Post needs to do in covering his reelection campaign this year: be hard-hitting on his record and provide fresh insight and plenty of context to put the past three rough years into perspective.

And they’ll be happy to start, beginning on Wednesday, November 7th, 2012.

And finally, Ed Koch, who flashed momentary glimpses of coming to his senses in recent months, reverts back into rube mode, sad to say. As Jeff Dunetz writes at Big Government, “I should have known better.  Ed Koch is comfortable bashing Obama until he sees the election coming–and suddenly any backbone is replaced by a wet noodle.”

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Moe Lane blogs:

Congresswoman Giffords, of course, was gravely wounded in 2011 in a murderous attack by a madman that left six dead and thirteen injured. Since then, Giffords has made a remarkable recovery; unfortunately, it apparently has not been enough of a recovery, so she’s resigning in order to concentrate on her health.  The video below of the announcement both shows the extent of her injuries, and the impressive extent to which she’s already surmounted them: I don’t know if Congresswoman Giffords will ever heal fully, but she’s already doing much better than I privately expected.

Arizona’s governor has called for a special election in April to replace Giffords.

Another Congressional Democrat has also announced he’s stepping down for health reasons (though not until November), legendary moonbat Maurice Hinchey (D-NY).  Concurrently, as this ignominious headline notes, Hinchey’s wife has been changed with her second DWI in eight months.

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As you may already know, legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died today at age 85, having spent the last months of his life embroiled in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. (And understandably so, given that Paterno apparently did indeed look the other way regarding the scandal). Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel writes:

Paterno died Sunday at a State College, Pa., hospital, suffering in his final days from lung cancer, broken bones and the fallout of a horrific scandal that not only cost him his job, but also his trademark vigor and a portion of his good name. He was 85 years old.

This is a complicated passing. What was once the most consistent and basic of messages – honor, ethics and education – seemingly lived out as close to its ideal as possible was rocked Nov. 5, 2011, when a grand jury indicted Paterno’s former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, of multiple counts of sexual abuse of children.

Many, including Penn State’s Board of Trustees, believed Paterno could have and should have done more to stop Sandusky, especially after allegations of misconduct arose in 2002. Within days Paterno was fired from the program and school to which he’d become synonymous.

Now, a little more than two months later, he’s gone for good, a bitter, brutal ending for an American original.

He was the winningest college football coach of all time, compiling a 409-136-3 record. He won national titles in 1982 and 1986 and recorded four other undefeated seasons, including consecutively in 1968 and 1969.

He was a bridge from a simpler time to the cutthroat business college football has become, somehow serving as both a progressive force (he believed in players’ rights, a playoff system and welcomed advancements in television) and a stubborn traditionalist (the Penn State uniforms remained basic, he never learned how to send a text message and he still used old-school discipline).

If you’ve got a mild sense of deja vu over this news, perhaps it’s because several news and opinion sources jumped the gun badly last night.  Perhaps the biggest media source with a slight case of egg on heir face was CBS — whose news reputation is already shaky (see also, origins of this Website’s original name) — flashed this on their sports division’s homepage last night in their attempt to be the first of the Big Boys to break the story. The Washington Post reports:

The Paterno incident demonstrates the consequences of reporting unverified information from an obscure source. It also suggests once again how quickly information, including the inaccurate kind, can move in the digital age. The entire life cycle of the Paterno story — from initial death reports to face-saving corrections — took about 45 minutes.

The episode brings to mind the media chain reaction that followed NPR’s erroneous report a year ago that U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) had died after being shot in Tucson. Giffords was severely wounded in the shooting, but survived.

Even as news organizations and journalists scrambled Saturday to correct their misinformation, the initial accounts touched off a massive wave of Paterno-is-dead postings on Facebook and Twitter.

“Say it ain’t so,” one Penn State student posted to Facebook around 9:45 pm. “RIP, JoePa.”

Another student posted a quote he attributed to Paterno: “’They asked me what I’d like written about me when I’m gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not that I was a good football coach.’ Joe Paterno, RIP.”

A few minutes after that, another student responded, “I heard he’s not dead.” And still another scolded: “Just thought everyone should know: Paterno family is denying the story he’s dead. Do some research, people.”

Several journalists took to Twitter late Saturday and early Sunday to criticize their own. “Paterno mess should teach journalists to — G-forbid — report before reporting,” tweeted Joe Flint, the Los Angeles Times’ media reporter. “Unlikely, as we we live in age of shoot first and aim later.”

In a note posted Saturday night on Onward State’s Web site and Facebook page, managing editor Devon Edwards retracted the Paterno story and said he was resigning. “There are no excuses for what we did,” he wrote. “We all make mistakes, but it’s impossible to brush off one of this magnitude. Right now, we deserve all of the criticism headed our way.”

Of course, for the Washington Post, the problem typically isn’t in breaking news too quickly; it’s keeping the news bottled up in their palace guard role as the President’s Official Gatekeeper.

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“Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has defeated the national media in South Carolina by a margin of 54 percent to 14 percent, according to a survey conducted by a Democratic polling firm.”

Not too surprising, when he’s the only viable candidate to show up so far with a hammer and tongs, ready to take the fight to the media and their presidential candidate.

Related: Michael Walsh adds, “if this wasn’t a wake-up call for Team Romney, he’s a totally hopeless candidate.” Read the whole thing.™

More: At the risk of sounding like an OJ juror, what he said!

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“NBC‘s Chuck Todd blasted Stephen Colbert’s recent political exploits, saying the Comedy Central host is essentially making a mockery of the political system and likely pushing an anti-Republican agenda.”

As opposed to Todd’s employers at NBC and (especially) MSNBC.

Related: The Anchoress on the MSM and their non-denial denial (as Jason Robards portraying Ben Bradlee would say, to continue the theme of actors playing journalists) on the Standing-O Newt Gingrich received when he told CNN’s John King where to put his microphone:

Perhaps they are in denial. They have a very tidy playbook about how to go about destroying Republican candidates: you call them stupid; you call them crazy; you feature ugly or unflattering pictures of them; you delve into their trash and their college transcripts (but only theirs) or you expose their sins (but only theirs), confident in the knowledge that people are sheep, susceptible to gossip and the media’s leading leash; conservatives, after all, are judgmental “values voters” who will (according to the playbook) be repelled by tawdry stories of narcissistic (Republican, only) politicians who serially cheat on their wives!

And last night, John King asked a question about Newt Gingrich’s past marriage issues — this is a big gun that’s supposed to do serious damage — and the thing backfired on them; it blew up in their hands as the audience “became uniform” in expressing its disgust not for the tawdry politician, but for the press that has become so nakedly overt in its bias, and so selective in what it finds newsworthy and what it does not.

The standing ovation for Newt’s remarks were not an endorsement of his behavior — many conservatives are troubled by Gingrich’s past and character does matter to them, while other conservatives are remembering their own sins and falling back on what they know of mercy, for the time being. No, that ovation was an endorsement of Gingrich’s disdain for the mainstream media, which they share, and a declaration to that same media that their playbook is played-out.

If the MSM is looking for balance when it comes investigative political reporting, a couple of modest proposals may be found here.

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“ABC unaccountably excludes Bill Clinton from lineup of pols who led ‘double lives,’” W. Joseph Campbell writes at his Media Myth Blog:

ABC News offered yesterday a risible lineup of two-timing politicians that omitted Bill Clinton, the philandering 42nd president, but included Thomas Jefferson, about whom the evidence of sexual dalliance is thin at best.

ABC’s roster of “the top eight politicians who led double lives” was posted online and promised “a look at some … tawdry affairs and public scandals” — and how the politicians implicated “weathered the storm.”

In addition to Jefferson, ABC included Grover Cleveland, the U.S. president in the 1880s and 1890s who fathered a child out of wedlock, and Eliot Spitzer, who as governor of New York consorted with a high-priced call girl.

The ABC roster also included an obscure and mostly forgotten former politician, Vito Fossella, a five-term New York congressman who in 2008 acknowledged fathering a child in an extramarital affair.

Given that the likes of Fossella made the list, it’s inexplicable that Clinton was omitted.

No, it’s pretty much SOP at ABC, which both heavily edited 2006′s The Path to 9/11 to tone down the Clinton administration’s decision to not assassinate Osama bin Laden in 1998, and then has blocked the video’s release onto DVD since. (Recall whom the presumptive Democrat presidential frontrunner was in 2006.)

I’m not sure how environmentally friendly this sort of giant airbrush operation is, but no one should expect ABC to turn off the compressors anytime soon. And as I noted earlier this week, perhaps it’s entirely coincidental, but ABC had back-to-back hits on GOP presidential candidates, even as its favored presidential candidate was occupying some of its parent company’s prime real estate.

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“Not Just A Democrat Dirty Trick, But A Crime,” John Hinderaker writes at Power Line, quoting from this passage of the Des Moines Register:

A Des Moines man has been arrested after police say he used, or tried to use, the identity of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz in a scheme to falsely implicate Schultz in perceived unethical behavior in office.

Zachary Edwards was arrested Friday and charged with identity theft.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety issued a news release saying Schultz’s office discovered the scheme on June 24, 2011 and notified authorities.

Hinderaker adds:

Edwards is a former Obama staffer who directed “new media operations” for Obama in five states during the 2008 primaries. Thereafter, he was Obama’s Director of New Media for the State of Iowa. In the Democratic Party’s lexicon, “new media” apparently includes identity theft.

Edwards now works for LINK Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm with extraordinarily close ties to Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin.

Harkin has had issues in the past with falsifying aspects of his own identity — not to mention history itself:

Update: “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

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Today marks the 70th anniversary of the infamous Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi Germany put the mechanisms into play that created what they euphemistically called the Final Solution. The Daily Mail reports:

The surroundings were utterly civilised – a villa overlooking a popular beach in Berlin.

The participants, enjoying gourmet cuisine and fine wines and discussing art and culture during breaks from business, appeared as ordinary and harmless as councillors at an average town hall meeting.

But the outcome of the infamous Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 – 70 years ago today – was previously unimagined barbarity.

In just two hours, 15 politicians and administrators of the Nazi state sealed the fate of more than 10 million people.

Here “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe” was determined.

These men, under the direction of SS General Reinhard Heydrich and his Jewish affairs expert Adolf Eichmann, decided how to exterminate all of Europe’s Jews.

This systematic, industrialised genocide ran alongside the slaughter of gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, prisoners of war and other enemies of the Nazis.

Today the victims will be remembered at ceremonies around the world – from the USA, to Israel and, of course, in Germany.

Back in 2000, HBO produced a superb — and appropriately chilling — TV movie recreating the conference, starring Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci, and a dozen or so mostly British character actors. I reviewed it a couple of years later at Blogcritics. If you ever get a chance, don’t miss it; it’s also worth watching to see where half the cast of Tom Cruise’s recent WWII potboiler Valkyrie originally appeared. (The other half came from here), along with an early appearance from Colin Firth in a supporting role, who would star a decade later in The King’s Speech.

It’s worth placing the conference into some perspective, however. It wasn’t a debate at all, so much as a fait accompli, as Heydrich and Eichmann presented their marching orders to all assembled. And it built on nearly a decade of earlier murders, as this recent New York Times article on “The First Killings of the Holocaust” notes:

The extermination of European Jews may have been formally outlined seven decades ago this month, but it began nearly nine years earlier, during Easter Week 1933, a few minutes after five o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, April 12, when four Jews — Arthur Kahn, Ernst Goldmann, Rudolf Benario and Erwin Kahn — were executed in precisely that order at a Nazi camp in the obscure Bavarian hamlet of Prittlbach.

These four killings framed the constituent parts of the genocidal process formalized at the Wannsee Conference: intentionality, chain-of-command, selection, execution. In the years to come, the process was refined, the numbers expanded monstrously, but the essential elements remained.

Even Prittlbach retained its central role. The hamlet was so small that the Nazis named their camp after the neighboring town of Dachau, which had access to a rail line. The boxcars rolled into Dachau, but the victims were marched to Prittlbach.

The Konzentrationslager Dachau in Prittlbach became the prototype for Nazi atrocity. It boasted the first crematory oven, the first gas chamber, and, on that sun-splashed spring day in April 1933, the first Jewish victims.

A Holocaust survivor once told me, and repeated to many others with equal conviction, that the trail of blood that began in Dachau ultimately led to Auschwitz. But it also almost ended there before it barely began.

Read the whole thing.

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