THE TELEGRAPH: President Barack Obama is beginning to look out of his depth. “Barack Obama is an eloquent, brainy and likeable man with a fascinating biography. He is not George Bush. Those are great qualities. But they are not enough to lead America, let alone the world.”
BACKGROUND ON ACORN from the New York Post.
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Hey, let’s shoot down Israeli jets if they fly over Iraq to attack Iran.
A BUNCH OF interesting food links. I’m surprised to see beer-tap systems included. But then, beer is a food.
STEPHEN GREEN: Deconstructing Dave.
THE IMPORTANCE OF more marketing.
BREITBART’S NEXT SCOOP: The pregame show.
MICHAEL BARONE: Stifling Dissent. And I remember when protest was patriotic!
ANN ALTHOUSE DECONSTRUCTS FRANK RICH:
I wonder why Frank Rich wanted to evoke Free Speech case law when his aim in this column is to bemoan vigorous speech. I suppose he just meant that neither “You lie” in the House chamber or “Fire” in a crowded theater is good. Except that “fire” is good when there is a fire, which leaves Rich’s analogy setting up the argument that shouting “You lie” during a presidential speech is desirable if the President really is lying. But that’s absurd. We’d never get to the end of these already seemingly endless orations if that was the rule.
Plus this:
Not every impolite outburst equals uncontrolled anger, and I don’t remember Rich caring about all the angry statements that were aimed at George Bush. I remember him making them. He and lots of other brave dissenters loved calling Bush a liar. I don’t remember back then hearing anybody propounding the theory that free speech needed to be tempered lest it give “permission to crazy people.”
Me neither.
PJM POLITICAL: From Mighty ACORN, Grows Big Government.com.
MORE COWBELL. Heh. I wish there were a sticker version.
UPDATE: And now there is! Ask, and ye shall receive!
THE DEVIL WEARS Pravda?
CALIFORNIA UPDATE: Going Broke: State’s a wreck – can it be fixed? “It’s been a mess for much of the past three decades because the combination of an out-of date tax system, reckless spending and fickle voters has made state government extremely vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of the economy.” Mostly the “reckless spending,” though I predict that’s the least likely problem to be addressed.
RETRO-FUN: The joy of Spirograph.
TEA PARTY OR THIRD PARTY? I talk to Roger Stone about whether the Tea Party movement will lead to a third party.
BOSTON GLOBE: Cash For Clunkers a “complete waste of taxpayer money.”
MICKEY KAUS: “Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment.com has stopped being subtle about hinting he has another scoop on order for next week. It’s apparently not another ACORN story. . . . I didn’t realize he’d have the course of events all planned out like Hari Seldon in Foundation.”
OBAMA: ACORN scandals? There are ACORN scandals? “I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.”
UPDATE: Reader Paul Jackson writes:
Let me be the first, and only probably, to liken Obama’s not knowing that ACORN receives a “whole lot” of federal money, to George H.W. Bush not knowing what a UPC scanner was. I realize he’s got a “whole lot” on his plate, but jeez don’t you think he should have expected an ACORN question or two. Also reminds me of the “above my pay scale” answer regarding when life begins. Now that he’s president, some of these issues just don’t have room in the Obama hard-drive anymore. Maybe if he wasn’t going on 5 Sunday shows, and Letterman, and chairing that UN thing, he might be a little more well versed in wtf is going on.
Dem or Rep, nothing looks stupider than the president not being “up” on current events.
Indeed. Plus, TigerHawk comments:
In a “meaning of ‘is’ is” moment, President Obama asks us to believe that he “didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.” No doubt he also did not know that ACORN was getting a wad of moola, a tin of lucre, a dollop of dough, bread to come and go on, a whole lot of benjamins, or a goodly pile of legal tender. But he apparently did know — we only know this because of his absurd parsing — that the federal government was funding ACORN to some degree.
The president really needs to speak less legalistically in ordinary conversation, because people do not like people who sound like lawyers. Learn not thy lessons from Bill Clinton, Mr. President!
Indeed.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Various readers point out that the problem with the Bush scanner story is that, unlike the report of Obama’s self-proclaimed ignorance of ACORN, the Bush scanner story isn’t true.
GOING “The Full Ginsburg.”
GENE RODDENBERRY’S MACINTOSH PLUS — Serial Number 0001 — is for sale.
CALLING FOR an independent prosecutor for ACORN. “ACORN’s close ties to the progressive movement and Democratic Party mean that there will be little public confidence if Holder decides not to pursue an ambitious investigation and ultimately prosecute. . . . Holder has compounded these concerns with two recent decisions. In New Mexico, federal attorneys apparently recommended high-level prosecutions in the pay-for-play scandal swirling around Gov. Bill Richardson. Holder’s office overrode them and dropped the case. Holder also decided to drop the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, where thugs were caught on tape brandishing clubs outside a voting precinct. In both cases, Holder has refused to explain his actions.”
IN THE MAIL: From Douglas Rogers, The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe.
THOUSANDS RALLY at Milwaukee Tea Party.
Plus, Nearly 10,000 gather for ‘Tea Party’ along Milwaukee’s lakefront.
AUSTIN POLICE want identities of online critics. Because when people criticize the police, the police should know who they are. . . .
UPDATE: Mea Culpa: I should’ve read the actual story, which is much less inflammatory than the Slashdot summary.
HISTORY’S GREATEST MONSTER: Romney taunts Democrats with memories of Carter. A Carter-rerun is now looking like a best-case scenario. . . .
CONSUMER-BLOGGING: So a while back, I posted a bleg for information on Sleep Number beds. The reports were generally good, so I bought one. We’ve now had it for a couple of months. I like it a lot. Helen likes it less than I do, but is sleeping better. Also, I’ve stopped snoring. Overall, a good buy, I think, even if it was a bit pricey.
SO, YEAH, BLOGGING WAS KINDA LIGHT YESTERDAY: Helen and I went to Nashville Friday and Saturday to cover the Smart Girl Politics conference for PJTV, and I left the charger for my laptop behind. (I took a charger, just not the right one. Doh!) So I had to limit my online time to keep from running out of battery before I got home.
The conference looked like a good one, and we got some great interviews. I’m currently logging shots before uploading the video to the PJTV studios later today. It should be up next week.
AN IDEA SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT BE WORTH TRYING: Sweden Slashes Income Taxes to Promote Job Growth.
DOUG MATACONIS: “Some libertarians and advocates of limited government and federalism, such as economists Thomas DiLorenzo and Walter Williams have argued that the Confederate State of America was the last gasp of limited government on the American continent in the face of Lincoln-esqe consolidation. However, is that really the case?”
Not so much. I’ve written about this topic before, and this still stands: “One suspects that for a certain sort of infantile mind, pro-Confederacy statements provide the same sort of thrilling sense of nonconformity that Marxism has provided. This, I guess, explains the weird strain of pro-Confederate sympathy that one finds among a certain segment of libertarians.”
EVAN COYNE MALONEY: ACORN, Kanye West and the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism.
STEPHEN GREEN: Keeping Abreast of the Czars.
BILL QUICK: Celebration of ACORN’s demise is premature. Keep your eye on the ball. And the bills!
THE CLINTON TAPES: Does anybody care about Bill Clinton any more?
PJTV: I talk with Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit about the power of organizing locally.
A ROUNDUP OF reporting on ACORN.
MICHAEL MALONE: Facebook Rules The World.
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT MAKES THE RUSSIANS WONDER how they managed to lose the Cold War.
REMINDING MEDIA MATTERS THAT Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t a right winger.
That fact has messed with their minds ever since. You could write a book on it. . . .
Related: Media Matters’ dishonest editing in support of their “smear” argument exposed. “This editing shows the rank dishonesty and flat-out incompetence of Media Matters. Did they think that no one would check the rest of the tape?”
Remember, Media Matters’ sole reason for existence is to give journalists who are already hopelessly deep in the tank a certain degree of comfort in their already-held views. So it’s not about convincing anyone who pays actual attention. . . .
FREEDOM STILL LIVES IN THE BREAST OF EVERY AMERICAN, but some have more room for it.
CRYBABIES IN THE WHITE HOUSE:
“These guys, everything is personal. I gotta tell you, everything,” Wallace said. “They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”
Better grow a thicker skin, guys, because it’s going to get worse. Heh. A lot worse.
BROKE: “The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says she is ‘considering all options, including borrowing from Treasury,’ to replenish the dwindling fund that insures bank deposits.”
BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple empire.
IN BRITAIN, a call to regulate photo retouching. Bah.
SPIDER ROBINSON’S WIFE IS VERY ILL. John Varley is trying to help. You can, too. (Bumped).
JIMMY CARTER’S RACE PROBLEM. And then there’s his more recent anti-semitism problem. He’s a foul old man, and a disgrace to the office he once held.
VOLVO’S NEW C30-BASED electric car.
HOW CASS SUNSTEIN’S CRITICS missed the boat.
IN THE MAIL: From Michael Walsh, Hostile Intent. It’s blurbed by Bill Whittle. What more do you need to know?
MEGAN MCARDLE: “If Republicans were smart, they’d find a couple of Democratic senators from swing states and pound the Teddy Kennedy rule change until they forced one of them to sit out the cloture vote. But I’m not exactly holding my breath on a resurgence of Republican strategic brilliance.”
ANN ALTHOUSE ON NANCY PELOSI’S “ridiculous mash of political will and phony emotion.”
MICHAEL BARONE: Reflections On The ACORN Controversy.
DAVID HARSANYI: Civility Is Overrated. Especially to elected officials.
Not sure I agree, but when the elected officials are calling us Nazis and racists, well . . .
WHY ISN’T THE ZUNE HD a cellphone, too?
WHAT COULD BE MORE FUN? Musical flamethrowers.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: Christopher Hitchens on Jimmy Carter. Still worth reading. “It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter’s mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.”
SO IF, AS MICHELLE OBAMA SAYS, women are “crushed” under our health care system, then how come they live longer than men?
JOHN SCALZI on special extended Director’s Cuts.
IT’S THE Friday Sale at Amazon.
THOUGHTS ON WHEN WE’LL SEE Human-Level AI. “So it depends on your definition. If you’re OK with calling a robot human equivalent if it can, say, do everything a janitor is supposed to, it’s likely by 2025; if it has to be able to create art and literature and do science and wheel and deal in the political and economic world and be a productive entrepreneur, you may have to wait a little bit longer.”
AQUACULTURE NOW ACCOUNTS FOR half the fish we eat.
IRVING KRISTOL HAS DIED. John Podhoretz and Roger Kimball offer thoughts.
THE TOP 10 most dangerous plants in the world.
PERSONALLY, I’M A WINESAP. “Hello, I’m a Mac.”
TURNABOUT: Arizona State Police to Investigate Aggressive Redflex Driver: YouTube video captures Redflex photo radar van driver violating several traffic laws. Turnabout seems like extremely fair play here. . . .
MICHAEL LEDEEN IS liveblogging Iran.
VIDEO: Thomas Dolby: “The Flat Earth.” Love the viewpoint shots. Wish I could have seen his tour with BT a couple of years back.
HISTORY: Tin Cans On Wheels.
IN THE MAIL: Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics. Seems timely.
REASON TV INTERVIEWS Sam Tanenhaus, author of The Death of Conservatism.
AN ACORN/PROSTITUTION MONOLOGUE from Jay Leno.
A SAD STORY: Proxy wedding means Marine’s widow, baby unwelcome.
UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!
THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY National Lawyers’ Convention will be in DC this year, Nov. 12-14. More information at the link.
KEITH HENNESSEY: 20 questions for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
DEBASING THE CURRENCY REDUCES ITS VALUE: ‘Racist’ claims defuse once powerful word: With the word being used so often, it’s harder to define its meaning. Gee, do you think? You keep running the printing presses with nothing to back them up, and that happens . . . .
PRAISE FOR ANDREW BREITBART from John Hinderaker. Andrew has certainly set a new standard in alt-media journalism.
BYRON YORK: Under Fire, Democrats Abandon ACORN in Droves.
FROM THE MANOLO: The Nerd-In-Chief. “Manolo says, you should see his collection of action figures.”
TOM NICHOLS: Obama Made the Right Decision on Missile Defense. I’m unpersuaded, but I hope I’m wrong.
ARNOLD KLING: “Of the following statements made by President Obama in his speech on health reform last week, which is not true? Answer below the fold.”
IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF “NOT RAISING TAXES” IS.
MATTHEW VADUM: Why ACORN’s Internal Audit Is A Sham.
SO HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKING OUT FOR YOU? Polish PM wouldn’t take U.S. calls.
MICKEY KAUS: Ezra Klein, Unreliable Narrator!
JAMES TARANTO: Kill Grandma or the Terrorists Win.
HOUSING CRISIS UPDATE: FHA cash reserves will fall below minimum. “The Federal Housing Administration has been hit so hard by the mortgage crisis that for the first time, the agency’s cash reserves will drop below the minimum level set by Congress, FHA officials said. . . . ‘It’s very serious,” FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens said in an interview. ‘There’s nothing more serious that we’re addressing right now, outside the housing crisis in general, than this issue.’”
“I FIND YOUR LACK OF GRACE DISTURBING.” Actually, this is my favorite photo-op so far. I feel a little sorry for Tim Morehouse, though.
