I’m traveling, and where I’m going the Internet connection’s going to be spotty, at best. Normally, I’d bring the laptop, but as you know it’s busted; hence, my recent exercise in crass commercialism by having a pledge drive on the subject.
So feel free to hit the tip jar…
Permit me to be the first to call the President’s bluff.
This Politico story has been making the rounds – see here and here and here and shoot, Memeorandum in general – and it’s mostly because of the passage below, in response over attempts to explain salary bonuses:
But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”
“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
Really? Continue reading Obama: standing between bankers and pitchforks? *Really*?
Why is this a hard question?
(Via Hot Air Headlines) A very interesting discussion here and here about whether President Obama’s gift of an iPod with preloaded MP3s to the Queen of England is, in point of fact, legal under current copyright law. Short version: yes, but only because of diplomatic immunity on the one hand and sovereign immunity on the other. If we were talking about two private individuals… nobody apparently bloody knows, one way or the other.
On a personal note, I am forced to admit: I am waiting with some cruel joy to hearing an increasingly querulous tone come into the EFF‘s discussions of this particular administration. I shouldn’t: the EFF is one of the few critics of the last administration that I actually retain a basic respect for. But that’s going to be counterbalanced by the vicarious pleasure of watching them wake up from their unicorn dream.
Crossposted to RedState.
PS: Crass commercialism alert; if you like the site, by all means hit the tip jar. I got a laptop that needs replacing.
I’m not that much in the mood for politics today – I’m in a weird headspace – but the LA Times blog got it wrong. Paterson said that it was “We probably have the worst tragedy. And senseless crime in this history of this city.” Not the state. I’ve watched the video at the link above, and he said ‘city.’ I haven’t found a video embed, but that’s what he said.
Which is a significant difference.
Crossposted to RedState.
Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke. Yes. The comic about the big dog. The one that rivals Garfield
Via Nodwick.com, which doesn’t need weird days to make me think it’s hysterical.
*But check out Garfield Minus Garfield. Which has its own book
PS: Crass commercialism alert; if you like the site, by all means hit the tip jar. I got a laptop that needs replacing.
As God is my witness, that’s what they named it.
Barry is a four foot long sea worm that terrorized a British aquarium for some time before they figured out that it was there. This sucker can bite through fishing line, and is of course poisonous, so it now lives in its own tank. Personally, I would have called in whatever government agency in the UK it is that handles alien invaders – every instinct I have is telling me that this thing has a saucer parked offshore, and maybe a cave lair full of cocooned victims – but then, I’m not a marine biologist.
Via a somewhat disquieted Fark.
Moe Lane
PS: Crass commercialism alert; if you like the site, by all means hit the tip jar. I got a laptop that needs replacing.
(Via Dan Collins‘ Tweet) But that’s OK: he’s British, so he doesn’t particularly give a tinker’s dam. First read Don Surber, for what we’ll charitably call the original answer (if you aren’t detecting any actual semantic content, don’t worry about it). Then read Crace for his deciphering of all the ahs, umms, and pauses that usually get edited out of the transcripts of the Greatest Orator EVAR.
Suddenly makes a lot more sense, huh?
TOTUS, you need to start thinking about this relationship that you have with the Big Guy. Is it really, you know, helping both of you?
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
PS: Crass commercialism alert; if you like the site, by all means hit the tip jar. I got a laptop that needs replacing.
Ben Smith tries to put this in terms of Obama being between Bush (who didn’t really care much about what the polls said*) and Clinton (who cared a great deal about what the polls said*):
He is polling more than Bush – a bit less than once a week for most of his young term, two people involved said.
Elements of Obama’s approach bear the hallmarks of message testing, like the introduction of the words “recovery” and “reinvestment” to rebrand the “stimulus” package, and aides said the polling has focused almost entirely on selling policy, not on measuring the president’s personal appeal.
A source familiar with the data said a central insight of more recent polling had been that Americans see no distinction between the budget and the popular spending measures that preceded it, and that the key to selling the budget has been to portray it as part of the “recovery” measures.
But Obama, though polling regularly, is no Clinton either. The 42nd president studied Penn’s polls with “hypnotic intensity,” the Washington Post once wrote. Obama leaves political guru David Axelrod to sift through the results.
…but there isn’t much daylight between going over the poll results yourself and having your guy do it for you. If Obama’s White House is polling multiple times a month, and policy is being changed because of that polling, then he’s running a government-by-polls. And we really should have a word for that sort of thing by now.
I don’t normally cover sports – particularly basketball, which is a fine game to play, if not to watch – but when I get forwarded this comment by Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl about the NBA’s quote-unquote ‘Green Week’:
Karl said. “I think it’s a great week. I’m an amateur socialist, I’m going green.
…and I see that the man is currently under an extension option for a $3 million/year contract, I’m pretty much require to say: dude, this socialism thing?
You’re doing it wrong.
Crossposted to RedState.
PS: Crass commercialism alert; if you like the site, by all means hit the tip jar. I got a laptop that needs replacing.
It is now theirs, with no ambiguities and/or caveats. They own it all.
I’ve received word that the Senate passed our current budget monstrosity 55-43. No Republican defections: we picked up Bayh and Nelson of Florida Nebraska [my bad!]. Earlier, the House version passed 233/196 with no Republicans voting for it, 20 Democrats voting against it, with supposed fiscal conservatives (and European junketeers) Charlie Melancon (LA-03) and Bart Gordon (TN-06) singled out for special ridicule as being part of the group of Blue Dogs that signed off on a 3.6 trillion dollar budget. In short, the GOP Held The Line again.
This, by the way, despite a whopping 214,000 signatures gathered by the Democrats in support of the budget: as the Washington Post rather gleefully noted [H/T: Instapundit], the stenographers over at CNN and Huffington Post duly wrote down the 642K number quoted without asking how many duplicates. It turns out that they counted each signature three times.
Continue reading The Democrats’ budget has passed. [UPDATED]
