Date ►►► April 30, 2012

Slick Chick Shivs Big Stick - UPDATED!

Hatched by Dafydd

You know it's not your everyday day, in this, the permanent campaign, when Arianna Huffington of the Huff'n'puff Press calls President Barack "Big Stick" Obama despicable:

In May 2011 President Barack Obama authorized the raid that did away with the al Qaida leader. But a video ad released by the Obama campaign last week, which included former President Bill Clinton trumpeting Obama’s achievement, also had wording which suggested that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Romney might not have made the same decision.

"I don't think there should be an ad about that," Huffington told "CBS This Morning" Monday. "I think it's one thing to celebrate the fact that they did such a great job [with television specials]. All that is perfectly legitimate. But to turn it into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do."

It's hard to believe that Huffington actually cares about the tender sensibilities of Mitt Romney; more likely, she detects a growing whiff of desperation in Big Stick's slick schtick. Obama must be getting a little gobsmacked by the fact that, contrary to his supremely confident sense of himself, he's not running ten points ahead of this upstart nobody with a funny name who wasn't even brilliant enough to make president of the Harvard Law Review. Once again, the American people are failing him!

When a narcissist's self image collides with reality, a common reaction is to lash out with an increasingly aberrant frenzy of accusations, each designed to demonstrate the physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual superiority of the narcissist to the barnacles and parasites trying to drag him down. But the rest of the world sees the attacks for what they are: indefensible defense mechanisms enabling the overly self-esteemed to live one more day as still the center of the universe.

(Obama's real crime, from Huffington's perspective, is that every time he does something like this, the glare from Barack's hand-held halo washes out the beauty of Arianna's own.)

UPDATE one hour later: The Big Stick doubles down! Obama traveled all the way to Japan to repeat his calumny that Mitt Romney would have been too cowardly or too squeamish to continue the Bush policy of assassinating Osama bin Laden, as Barack Obama did:

"I'd just recommend that everybody take a look at people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and to take out bin Laden," Obama said, obviously taking a shot at Romney. "I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. And that's been at least my practice. I said that I would go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him--and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they would do something else, then I'd go ahead and let them explain it."

But this time Barack Obama added a "visible smirk." Mighty presidential of him.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 30, 2012, at the time of 2:10 PM | Comments (3)

Date ►►► April 23, 2012

Obamunism and the Mark of the Outcast

Hatched by Dafydd

According to Newsmax -- admittedly not the most reliable of sources, but it's hard to doubt this story -- many, many people have taken to Twitter to issue direct, specific, and presumably criminal threats to kill George Zimmerman (he who shot Trayvon Martin, possibly in self defense), along with solicitations for others to kill Zimmerman, as well as the judge who released him on bail. Some of the threats or solicitations:

  • Someone pass me a gun, imma go follow zimmerman, shoot, and kill him and say #imstandingmyground
  • I think imma personally kill George Zimmerman . . . anyone's welcome to join
  • Once u been convicted of a crime & let out on bail u can't be charged 2x for the same thing so that means sum1 gonna have to kill Zimmerman.
  • Zimmerman released from jail someone kill the judge!!!!!

Nor to forget the "dead or alive" wanted poster promulgated by the New Black Panther Party.

My question: Will any of these people actually be charged or indicted for making terroristic threats, solicitations to murder, or any other obvious felony?

Or does the well-publicized fact that President Barack H. Obama and his administration are backing Trayvon Martin 100% in this controversy mean that the feds -- whose jurisdiction I assume it would be, since Twitter crosses all state lines -- declare, in effect, a de facto, universal letter of marque and reprisal, "open-season" on Zimmerman? Will Obama give murderers carte blanche for any act of violent revenge they please... so long as the target is that "white Hispanic" that the American Left hates worse than anybody except perhaps the Koch brothers (whom the Left also blames for this shooting)?

If we don't hear about numerous arrests of Twitter twits, I submit we will have our answer:

Actually, it's even more lawless than that; for in the old days of sail, each privateer required specific permission from the government (the letter itself)... and he was supposed only to capture ships and bring them before a tribunal for judgment; he was only allowed to fire upon them if they resisted. The present Twiminals have no authorization from anybody to do anything, and they have no intention of taking Zimmerman for trial but simply want to kill him.

The Left has pronounced Zimmerman beyond all legal protection, moral rights, social support, and even beyond the minimal humane consideration. Without an immediate crackdown by the relevant law-enforcement agencies, Zimmerman may well end up lynched. The Obamunists will have carved "the mark of the Outcast" into George Zimmerman's brow... and anybody is allowed to do anything to an Outcast.

Yet I have a cold gut-feeling that the federal response to these crimes will be... nada. After all, if Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon; the fish rots from the head down, and even cops take their cue from the capo di tutti capi (along with his designated button-man, Eric Holder).

In the lawless age of Obama, God knows we need a federal shall-issue concealed-carry permit, one that overrides all state and local laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons. Otherwise, at least a third of the population of the United States are utterly denied our fundamental, individual right -- affirmed recently by the U.S. Supreme Court in McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 3025 (2010) -- to keep and bear arms.

McDonald did not, of course, address whether carrying a concealed weapon is also individually protected by the Second Amendment; but we could clear that up with federal legislation as above. I truly hope that this will be one of the first actions of an incoming Republican Congress and presidency.

Democrats will inevitably try to filibuster it; but nowadays, it's not at all certain that they'll get their 41 votes.

Rather than hunker into a defensive crouch, hoping to stave off the mythical "people's movement" to install a European-style gun ban, let us go on the offensive: Let us demand that our exceptional right to keep and bear arms finally be fully implemented, as the Founders intended.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 23, 2012, at the time of 1:57 PM | Comments (4)

Date ►►► April 17, 2012

Click Bait

Hatched by Dafydd

All right, here's the current main argument for recalling Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, as enunciated by Progressivist bloggers:



Ciara Matthews

Walker's communications director, Ciara Matthews,
back in college when she worked at Hooters


If I may flesh out the argument a bit more, perhaps you will see the force of its logic:

Resolved: Wisconsonites should recall Walker from gubernatorial office because his good-looking communications director, Ciara Matthews, was a total babe when she was in her early twenties.

Here are some Progressivists in full cry, making the Argument of Hypocritical Hooterism...

Jezebel.com:

In a hypocritical turn, Matthews seems totally fine with selling chaste sexiness but not permitting sexuality -- she used to be a waitress at Hooters. Now, short of cooking meth or murdering enemies of the mob, doing what you have to do to work your way through college is generally admirable, and Matthews shouldn't be faulted for donning the shiny suntan nylons and orange short shorts of the Hooters uniform. As they say, if you've got it, flaunt it. But profitting from selling a plasticized form of unnatural sexiness designed to arouse men while simultaneously believing that women should be forced to face the "consequences" of actually giving into to their sexual desires is a pretty backward way of thinking. [By "consequences," Ms. Erin Gloria Ryan means that Matthews opposes abortion -- DaH.] And she should be taken to task for it. So we've posted this hilarious picture of her in her Hooters uniform to illustrate the ridiculousness of all of this -- Walker, Matthews, their wacky beliefs, and the general asshats who we've somehow elevated to positions like Governor of an entire goddamn state. Vote, people! This is what happens when you don't!

The Capital Times:

The Jezebel.com website that posted her photo questions how Matthews can square her work for an organization that clearly markets sexuality with her longtime war on Planned Parenthood and, well, all those traditional Republican values.

I can see that your ire is aroused, and you may be about ready to take matters in hand; if you lived in Wisconsin, I'm quite certain you would be starting to doubt whether Walker is fit to serve in public office after employing a woman who is attractive and was at one time willing to wear shorts and a tank top.

Let's firm-up the argument. Here, look at Ms. Matthews' chest:



Ciara Matthews' Chest

Ciara Matthews' chest

Your anti-Walker position is hardening. Now look at her legs:



Ciara Matthews' Legs

Ciara Matthews' legs

I can sense you getting all hot and bothered about the opportunity to vote Walker out of office. Imagine, having a communications director who looked like that. How could anyone possibly oppose recalling Governor Walker after seeing this picture?

~

However... I shamefacedly confess I'm missing something -- like some connection, however feeble, between antecedent and conclusion. Here, try this one on for size:

Resolved: Americans should defeat Barack H. Obama's bid for reelection because his good-looking wife, Michelle, was a total babe when she was in her early twenties.

Does it make sense when applied against the Left, as some believe it does against the Right? How, exactly? And what is the logical contradiction between (a) promoting sexuality, while at the same time (b) opposing abortion?

I'm trying to imagine the target audience for this argument; who is it who will decide to vote for Walker's recall opponent -- Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett or erstwhile Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk -- because a senior member of Walker's staff was once a young hottie?

  • Are conservatives supposed to be turned off of supporting Walker by this revelation? Conservatives don't like hot chicks? I vaguely remember many conservatives (metaphorically) slavering over Carrie Prejean, the maritally conservative Miss USA contestant; not to mention Michelle Malkin, Michelle Bachman, Ann Coulter, Megyn Kelly, and the girl in the Snorgtees. And of course, Power Line's John Hinderaker regularly posts pictures of beauty-pageant contestants on the blog. Evidently, conservative males (and conservative lesbians, perhaps) do enjoy the sight of beautiful women, conservative or otherwise.
  • How about conservative straight women? I've never seen even one example of the hatchet-faced, censorious, shrewish, misogynistic caricature that Progressivists falsely accuse conservative women of displaying. Have you?

    If not, then I doubt the Ciara Syllogism is driving conservatives away from the polls in May.

  • Nor do I notice that independents are particularly repelled by the sight of a beautiful, young femme. Should they be? Is there something in the water that independents drink that causes them to recoil from what others enjoy? Not that I've noticed.
  • And goodness knows, the sight of a good-looking, scantily clad hunkette certainly should not bother a liberal! Their entire ideology appears to be nothing but an excuse for promiscuity of various kinds, particularly coital. They live for libido.

So which group of Wisconsin voters, even in the delusional minds of the red "feminists" who are pushing this argument, are supposed to be swung towards recall by a jpeg of Ciara Matthews in her Hooter days? Enquiring minds... are baffled.

I try to avoid assuming that Progressivists and modern liberals are all drooling idiots; it's too easy an answer to virtually everything they say or do. But when you have eliminated the impossible...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 17, 2012, at the time of 1:12 AM | Comments (5)

Date ►►► April 16, 2012

Scandal, Egads - Scandal!

Hatched by Dafydd

 

Soldiers...

 

...Hiring hookers...

 

 

...It's the most unheard-of thing

I ever heard of
!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 16, 2012, at the time of 6:14 PM | Comments (1)

Wreckless Presidents

Hatched by Dafydd

Considering the sheer volume of travel Presidents of the United States undertake, and the bizarre and unstable places they sometimes visit, and the vast sea of negligence through which they (and the rest of us) routinely wade, I find it simply astonishing that in all of American history, not a single American president has ever been killed in office by accident.

Nearly 10% of American presidents (four) have died in office due to illness; the same number have been murdered in office. But none has died in a plane crash, a helicopter crash, a car crash, a train crash; none has fallen off a high platform or precipice; none has drowned; none has accidentally ingested poison; none has died of hitting his head against something hard and solid, like a bathtub or a protruding steel pipe; none has been crushed by a collapsing building nor blown to bits by an underground hydrogen bubble; none has impaled himself on a rhinoceros horn nor strangled to death in a grand piano; none has been mauled to death by a wild animal (no Monica Lewinsky jokes, please! And even Jimmy Carter survived the seaborne rabbit attack); none has frozen to death, burned to death, starved to death, drunk himself to death, or decompressed to death; heck, we've never even had a POTUS stamp his foot so hard, the ground cracked open and swallowed him up like Rumplestiltskin.

Isn't that run of excellent luck more than a little bizarre?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 16, 2012, at the time of 1:02 AM | Comments (2)

Date ►►► April 14, 2012

Peg Bundy Progressivists

Hatched by Dafydd

Power Line's John Hinderaker (my favorite fave) looks at a few reasons Why Liberals Hate Ann Romney, but I think he missed one.

Most of these liberal Progressivists are young, younger than I, probably younger than a great many of you, Dear Readers. Their own mothers likely were not stay-at-home mothers; they worked outside the home -- they had to work because of the huge taxes levied on the middle income in contemporary America.

They're also much too young, today's Progressivists, to remember movies and television shows, the source of all pop (i.e., liberal) culture, that portrayed stay-home moms in a positive way. Sure, Leave It to Beaver, the Dick Van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, and suchlike still play in reruns on TV Land and other channels; but my experience is that many young viewers -- especially those egotistical and condescending enough (and with short enough attention spans) to be liberals -- simply cannot abide black and white TV and movies. It's like so last century!

So whence do they get their image of what a stay-at-home mom is, does, and looks like? My guess is from primarily one show: Married With Children:

  • The show is in color, and it has a contemporary feel -- unlike, say, the Brady Bunch. It plays into the hip, cynical, ironic, liberal narrative of what "real" families are like (i.e., severely dysfunctional, as are many more liberal than conservative families).
  • Peg Bundy is a lousy mother: She spends much of her day lying on the couch eating bon-bons and couldn't care less that one kid is a slut who sleeps with anybody or anything, and the other is a geeky target of violent abuse at school.
  • She has big hair.
  • She never goes to the gym, yet miraculously maintains an incredible figure -- thereby inducing extreme envy among physically and intellectually lazy feminist Progressivists.
  • And she's dumb as a doorknob, again allowing a feeling of tremendous superiority in the minds of narcissistic lefties.

So when Hilary Rosen sneers out the words "stay-at-home mom," making them sound like an obscene epithet, I'm utterly certain that the image that pops into her head is brainless, duplicitous, lazy, useless leech Peg Bundy. And I reckon John missed that possibility because he's not all that conversant with the high art of (relatively) contemporary American sit-coms.

Maybe we can get the term "Peg Bundy Progressivists" to go viral...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 14, 2012, at the time of 1:38 PM | Comments (1)

Date ►►► April 10, 2012

Look For a Mitt Surge

Hatched by Dafydd

Just a quick prediction: Now that Rick Santorum, the only viable Romney rival still standing, has dropped out of the race -- that's what "suspending our campaign" means in ordinary English -- look for a rapid jump upwards in Romney's popularity and general-election polling.

Until now, every poll pitting Romney against Barack H. Obama on various issues or general popularity has had two sources of negative responses:

  1. Liberals and liberal-leaning "centrists" who genuinely like the policies of Progressivism and Leftism, and genuinely hate the policies of conservatism, Capitalism, individualism, and Americanism. These are honest disagreers.
  2. Disingenuous conservatives who desperately hoped to pull Romney down, so that a "real conservative" could take his place on the general-election ballot. Some such conservatives falsely claimed that they liked Obama, just to tarnish Romney's best argument, "electability," in the primaries. (Call them the Lampooners: "If you nominate Mitt, we'll shoot this election!")

Group B may be sizeable, including supporters of all previous and then-current "not-Romneys" -- Michelle Bachman, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum. As Romney rarely won an absolute majority in the sundry primaries, supporters of the other candidates necessarily outnumbered him. But obviously not every member of Group B is a Lampooner, or else Obama would be ahead by a runaway landslide of 25%.

It's impossible to know for sure what percent of the not-Romneys became Lampooners, actually telling pollsters they liked, supported, or would vote for Obama in November; but whatever that percent is, it's unlikely in the extreme that they literally will do so. Why would someone who thinks Romney is too moderate strike back by voting for the ultra-Progressivist Obama? It's absurd.

Therefore, we can expect the Lampooners by and large to vote for Romney in November, except for a tiny handful who are so disgruntled, they will sit out the election. (Arms folded, glowering at their neighbors, truculent faces daring someone to make sumpfin' out of it.)

Can we estimate the size of the Lampooners and their impact on polling? Let's get some ballparking going.

On today's Real Clear Politics newest-polls page (ABC: Obama +7, Rasmussen: tie, IBD-CSM-TIPP: Obama +8, all taken before Santorum's withdrawal), Barack Obama averages 5% ahead of Romney, 47.3% to 42.3%.

But roughly half of Republican primary voters supported a candidate other than Romney; this is Group B. Let's look at two guesses of the size of the Lampooner vote, 10% of Group B and 5% of Group B.

  • Suppose that one tenth of Group B were Lampooning in those polls; that would mean, in our example, that 4.0% to 4.5% of the pro-Obama responses actually came from conservatives who, in reality, intend to vote for Romney in the general... they only said the opposite to try to influence the primary vote.

    If we shift the low end of 4% from Obama to Romney, that would make the new total 46.3% to 43.3% in favor of Mitt Romney.

  • If only 5% of Group-B Republicans are Lampooners, then we should expect to see 2.0% to 2.2% switch from Obama to Romney, making the new total 45.3% to 44.3% in favor of Obama, which is well within the margin or error -- that is, a statistically dead heat.

(If we give a higher weight to the Rasmussen survey, which polls likely voters instead of registered voters and has a better reputation than the others, this "nominee effect" is magnified; Mitt would likely then be ahead of Obama in both the 10% or 5% scenarios.)

Taking into account the concerted internet campaigns for conservatives to "false-flag" or Lampoon the pollsters, I think it very plausible that the Lampooners did indeed represent 5% to 10% of the Republican primary electorate. Ergo, I expect that over the next month or so, the polling will shift 2% to 5% away from Obama and towards Romney, putting Romney ahead or at least even.

The national conventions start with the GOP the week of August 27th, in Tampa, Florida (a swing state we'll likely recapture); followed immediately by the Democrats the week of September 3rd, in Charlotte, North Carolina (what could possibly go wrong?) By that point, I expect Mitt Romney will hold a small but statistically significant lead over Barack Hussein Obama. And we'll likely see yet another surge towards Romney in late September or early October, a month before the election, as voters take a long and sober look at the economy.

As Samuel Johnson is reputed to have said (but probably didn't, exactly), the sight of the gallows doth wonderfully concentrate the mind.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 10, 2012, at the time of 5:29 PM | Comments (6)

Date ►►► April 9, 2012

The Not-So-Obligatory "John Derbyshire" Post

Hatched by Dafydd

Yeah, yeah, self-defined conservatives -- as are most of them -- may feel a moral and ideological obligation to distance themselves from a man who, however reprehensible are his quaint and ideosyncratic ideas about blacks, does claim to be a conservative and was closely associated with the National Review, an obviously conservative magazine and webzine. I'm reminded of the earlier case of William F. Buckley, jr., writing "In Search of Anti-Semitism," the lengthy examination of two contributers to NR, Joe Sobran and Patrick J. Buchanan, to determine whether their views on Jews and Jewishness crossed the line into out and out antisemitism in either case. (As I recall, Sobran was condemned while Buchanan was exonerated, though subsequent events might have caused Buckley to change his mind about the latter, had he revisited the issue some years later.)

The essay was later expanded into a book by the same name.

Clearly, it's of some particular interest to conservatives to investigate fellow-travelers who appear to be dancing on the brink of the reprehensible generalization of racism, which has much in common with primitive, consanguinity-based tribalism. But as I'm not a conservative but rather a libertarian, of sorts, I'm far more concerned about feuding with other libertarians (who are by and large illiterate dolts) than checking under the nails and behind the ears of conservatives. Let them launch their own dirty linen in a trial balloon and see if anyone salutes it!

But I got sucked in by my two favorite blogs, both conservative, of course -- in fact, both run by conservative lawyers: Powder Line and Patterico's Pantaloons. (I read Derbyshire's actual post, of course; but unlike Patterico, I didn't follow all the links; sorry.)

You really should read the original blasphemy that started the avalanche that culminated in Derbyshire being fired from NRO, because I won't bother quoting from it. Too much work. I'll just rattle off why he made me roll my eyes in bemused contempt, if that's not an oxymoron.

I'm a kind of libertarian; more accurately a Capitalist, individualist, pragmatist whose chief institutional goals are sustainable human liberty and individual justice... can't I just say libertarian, without being lumped together with L. Neil Smith (another science-fiction writer who despises me) and Ayn Rand? By my nature, I reflexively treat people as individuals. I recognize the existence of, specifically, race; but I reserve that consideration for statistical sociology, such as criminology, educational attainment, and employment. When talking about individuals, I treat them as, you know, individuals, without taking the shortcuts offered by profiling, which is notoriously inaccurate when based upon race.

But I find Derbyshire trying to lure me into such sweeping generalizations, and I recoil. He seems to want me to consider people only en masse, and use groupthink to deduce the specific individual... and I just won't do it. I am irked no end by anyone who urges me in that direction. Such paralogia annoys me every bit as much as Lefties trying to lure me into "Progressivism," which is also against my nature.

My objection to Derbyshire's post is not the fact that he crafts a racial heirarchy that puts blacks at the lowest level (which he surely does); but rather that he thinks I should react to an individual black -- or white, brown, yellow, or red -- as nothing but a representative of some group of humans. As if we're all interchangeable, nought but ordinal numbers that only describe where one stands in line; rather than cardinal numbers that actually seek to express the unique characteristics found in each person, that which makes him "Brad" and not "me" or "you" or some other "him."

Instead of seeing Thomas Sowell or Barack H. Obama or Steven Barnes, Derbyshire wants me to see a generic, plainwrap person-entity with a blue stripe that reads "African-American." I find it simultaneously decadent and atavistic, and I believe another oxymoron lurks somewhere within: self-indulgent decay, morally and intellectually, that orbits us back to a world of tribes, people defined by physical similarity and "blood ties" that used to describe the entirety of human civilization, fifteen thousand or so years ago.

I find Derbyshire's racial panic unevolved, unenlightened, and thoroughly unAmerican. It's the first piece of his I have ever read, and it likely will be the last. I can't buy the premise, so to hell with the bit!

And that's where I stand. I had no need to announce it, but I seized the opportunity to give a different perspective on the ancient evil.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 9, 2012, at the time of 2:23 AM | Comments (7)

Date ►►► April 3, 2012

Did Silly Goose Obama Just Cook ObamaCare's Goose?

Hatched by Dafydd

Nearly every court watcher agrees that ObamaCare hangs by a thread... the thread of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The four "conservative" (i.e., judicially modest) justices -- Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts -- appear poised to find the individual insurance mandate unconstitutional, and possibly the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 -- depending on how they rule on "severability," whether any part of ObamaCare can stand if the core of it is gutted.

And it's a dead cert that all four "liberal" (i.e., radical leftist) justices -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan -- will uphold the law, regardless of its constitutionality or lack thereof; for they rule according to politics, and it's very, very bad politics for the Left if they strike down the "crown jewel" of Barack H. "Occupier" Obama's administration. (Occupy la Casa Blanca's motto is "Everything inside the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State.")

That leaves the swingin' justice, Anthony Kennedy, holding the sack.

So along comes the Occupier with this pronunciamento:

"I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," President Obama said Monday of the High Court’s consideration of his signature health care legislation....

"I would just remind conservative commentators that for years what we have heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example and I am pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step," he said.

Translation: I won the dang election, and now I get to decide -- me, not a gaggle of errand boys for grocery clerks -- what's constitutional and what's not. So shut the frack up... or else!

Now this sort of taut, rage-fueled hectoring may play very well within the authoritarian Left; but how will it play in the broader electorate? None too well, I expect. Few ordinary people like to be lectured by a corrupt, abject failure. And more to the immediate point, how will it play to the majesty and dignity of the Court, especially to Justice Kennedy?

If Obama even thought about it for a moment before speaking, he might imagine that Kennedy will be intimidated, will fret that the press might beat him up again; and thus he will respond by slinking away with his tail between his judicial legs.

But I think the president, in this case as in so many other instances, is living in a lefty bubble. I believe he has seriously misjudged the consequences of yet another example of presidential defiance bordering on outright threat. Rather than frighten Kennedy into kow-towing to the man in the high castle, I suspect that Kennedy -- however he might have been wavering about striking down the entirety of ObamaCare -- will now dig in his heels and go the whole nine hogs. I think he's going to call Obama's bluff and go all "Citizens United" on 'im.

By his ham-fisted tantrum, I believe that Barack Obama has thrown the ObamaCare goose into a cooked hat. I believe that come June, the Occupier in Chief will desperately wish for a Wayback Machine to unsay his words from yesterday.

Yet another epic fail.

P.S. For a riotously funny order issued by the 5th Circus -- well, riotous as such court orders go -- check the second update to the mononymous Karl's typically wonderful post on Patterico's Pantaloons. It's a gas, gas, gas!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 3, 2012, at the time of 8:20 PM | Comments (4)

Date ►►► April 2, 2012

We Have Nothing to Jeer But Smear Itself

Hatched by Dafydd

And this one goes so over the top, stretching so far beyond the apogee of reality's rubber band, that it's already snapping back in NBC's corporate face like the hammer of God.

A few days ago, NBC's Today Show broadcast the audio of one of George Zimmerman's cell calls to the coppers, shortly before he ended up face-up on the sidewalk with a split lip and broken head -- and his seeming assailant, Trayvon Martin, ended up face-down and dying of a point-blank gunshot wound. Remember, the question is whether Zimmerman was acting in self defense, or whether he was a violent racist hell-bent on killing a black man for daring to be in the wrong neighborhood.

Here is the critical moment from the call as NBC -- one of the "big three" networks -- broadcast it:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

Wow, could one imagine a more damning statement? Clearly Zimmerman was so deeply racist that the mere fact that Martin "look[ed] black" was enough for Zimmerman to conclude that he was "up to no good!" As any fool can see, Martin was unlucky enough to run into yet another armed, racist white guy. (All right, armed, racist "white-Hispanic," whatever that is; but it's the thought that counts.)

Except...

It turns out that NBC, how to put this delicately, slightly edited the actual audio recording. Just because of time factors, of course; the complete transmission from Zimmerman was simply too darned long to squeeze into the audio-clip for the Today Show.

Just for the completists among us, those who don't understand what is important and what trivial, here is full transcript of that moment on the phone between Zimmerman and the police dispatcher:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy -- is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

The lines in italic are those that NBC simply had to leave on the cutting-room floor; no time, no time! Alas, telling viewers that this recording was edited would also have taken up time; so transparency was right out as well. Time, time, time!

Oddly, however, the full version doesn't quite seem to make the same narrative point as the tighter, edited version. Say... I reckon that would be yet another reason for snipping those twenty-five completely unnecessary words. Son of a gun!

But that's why we have editors, don'tcha know.

.
.
.

Is it just me, or does it seem like the Left is barely even trying these days? What will they offer tomorrow: "The dog ate my audio?"

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 2, 2012, at the time of 3:19 AM | Comments (2)

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