Stewart v. O’Reilly. Live. On the Internet. Awesome.
Category: Politics
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It’s Going to be Legend–Wait For It–ary
*Business Insider* talking about Mitt Romney’s advantage on money left to spend:
> And now, he’s got a massive upper hand, which very few people are talking about. Once he and his surrogates carpet bomb the swing states with adverts, by shear mathematics Obama will take a small but predictable dive in the polls. In the middle of October, Mitt starts looking like a contender again.
> The past few weeks of Mediocre Mitt are about to end. He’s got more resources than the Obama campaign, and his ability to find cheap media markets and flex his muscle are just coming to the fore. This, plus a few more bad economic months, and he’s in the White House. Mitt is undervalued.
I hope *Business Insider* is right on this one.
> If the media cannot knock Romney out over the tape, it’s a new ballgame and Romney will have the momentum.
I hope so.
> Megarif, president of the Libyan National Congress, also said the violence, including the timing, bears the markings of an Al Qaeda attack.
> He said the attacks were carried out by foreigners who have been infiltrating his country since the uprising ended the dictatorship of the late Muammar al-Qaddafi and that they used the Cairo protests as a cover to attack the U.S. Consulate.
The continued evolution of Al Qaeda’s terror strategy.
> One of the most important things to America’s youth is the ability to secure employment upon graduation. It is essential to our well being. It keeps us from a life of debt and dependency, and allows us to pursue the fundamental American ideal of self-determination. In this regard, President Obama has utterly failed our generation. Taking into account the dismal level of work force participation for people ages 18-29, America’s youth unemployment level is 16.7%.
I am fine if my president does not do Reddit Ask-Me-Anything session. I am not fine with a president who has hampered economic recovery. America’s young people should not be subjected to this:
> The only option for many of us will be to languish in our childhood bedrooms, provided that we’re fortunate enough to have parents who can afford to take us back in. I have heard over and over again from this administration that “America is on the right track.” But how long must we continue on a track producing unacceptable results until we finally realize we’re going the wrong way? How long can we justify blaming previous administrations for our current failures?
Hats off to Bryan Jacoutot for writing this letter.
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When Doing Nothing is the Better Plan
Thomas Sowell:
> History tells a different story. For the first 150 years of this country’s existence, the federal government felt no great need to “do something” when the economy turned down. Over that long span of time, the economic downturns were neither as deep nor as long-lasting as they have been since the federal government decided that it had to “do something” in the wake of the stock-market crash of 1929, which set a new precedent.
I am sure that raising taxes on small businesses and providing huge new entitlements will help things though, right?
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Romney Getting it Right
> Romney was right to call the Cairo embassy’s obsequiousness “disgraceful,” which is why the White House eventually followed Romney’s lead in disavowing it. Romney was also right to defend his statement against charges that he had “jumped the gun,” saying it is “never too early . . . to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.” Although the press acted as if Romney’s performance at the press conference was laughably unpresidential, what he said was appropriate and true: “It breaks the hearts of all of us who think of these people who have served during their lives for the cause of freedom and justice and honor,” and “the attacks in Libya and Egypt underscore that the world remains a dangerous place, and that American leadership is still sorely needed.”
National Review nails it.
I like to think I am not a single issue voter, but the ability of the president to nominate Supreme Court justices means I will probably never vote for a candidate from the Democrat Party as it is currently constructed[^f5411].
[^f5411]: *I.e., far left, “progressive,” etc…
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Getting One Wrong
I agree with Kyle Baxter more frequently than not, however, he got this one wrong:
> The Romney campaign’s first statement on the events in Egypt and Libya was factually incorrect and should have been rescinded immediately. It’s mind-boggling that his campaign could not bother to fact-check their remarks before putting them out, worrying that their processes are so poor as to allow it, and disturbing if they don’t really care.
As [William Jacobson has pointed out](http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LegalInsurrection/~3/ucw3ATzZGCA/), Mr. Baxter’s opinion[^fn1] is actually not the case:
> With each passing hour the correctness of Romney’s statements, and dereliction of duty of our media, becomes more clear.
I think [Erick Erickson nailed it](http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/13/the-american-media-beclowned-themselves-yesterday/):
> A friend points out that what the news media is doing here is roughly what they did after Trayvon Martin’s killing. They rushed to judgment, got basic facts wrong, and then sensationalized it with audio experts and what not only to have to beat a path to retreat later.
It is sad that such tragedies have been handled so poorly by those who say their job to provide America with its news. Thankfully, alternative outlets exist to correct this disinformation.
[^fn1]: Mr. Jacobson was not writing a response to Mr. Baxter, just a general comment on the coverage.
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Looking at Romney’s Strategy
Michael Tanner:
> I thought that when Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan to be his running mate, it meant that the Romney campaign was preparing to wage a bold campaign based on big issues. Instead, the Romney campaign seems to continuing in the assumption that you can beat something with nothing.
Initially, I disagreed with Mr. Tanner. I thought Governor Romney had started to give more plans about what he intends to do to help the country. I think, however, I have just been searching out that information. I have been doing the research to figure out what Governor Romney’s plans are, instead of getting that information from the campaign itself. Maybe Mr. Tanner is right and it is time for Governor Romney to make the case for why he is the right guy to replace President Obama, not just the case for why President Obama needs to be replaced.
What is worse: (1) he declined the meeting because he was too busy campaigning or (2) he declined the meeting because he has no interest in supporting Israel against Iran?
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The Bailout Party
> The Democrats cling to the ridiculous claim that the bailout of GM and its now-Italian competitor, Chrysler, saved 1.5 million U.S. jobs. This preposterous figure is based on the assumption that if GM and Chrysler had gone into normal bankruptcy proceedings, the entire enterprise of automobile manufacturing in the United States would have collapsed — not only at GM and Chrysler but at Ford and foreign transplants such as Toyota and Honda.
“Fact checkers” were too busy checking Paul Ryan’s marathon times to point this one out. Besides, it’s not like “GM shares have lost half their value since January 2011” or anything.
I remember rolling my eyes at all the tech blogs who made fun of Governor Romney during President Obama’s Reddit Ask-Me-Anything. “He probably has never heard of Reddit” they laughed. That’s fine, but I bet he can dial an iPhone,
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The Opposite of a Pep Talk
Andrew McCarthy writing on National Review:
> Here is the blunt explanation: We have lost a third of the country and, as if that weren’t bad enough, Republicans act as if it were two-thirds.
> The lost third cannot be recovered overnight. For now, it is gone. You cannot cede the campus and the culture to the progressive, post-American Left for two generations and expect a different outcome. So even if Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter — and he has actually been much more effective, and therefore much worse — it is unreasonable to expect a Reagan-style landslide, and would be even if we had Reagan. The people coming of age in our country today have been reared very differently from those who were just beginning to take the wheel in the early 1980s. They have marinated in an unapologetically progressive system that prizes group discipline and narrative over free will and critical thought.
I want to say that Mr. McCarthy is just being pessimistic, but part of me thinks he is probably right. Hopefully, in a couple of months, it will turn out that he is wrong.
I, unsurprisingly, agree with Victor Davis Hanson:
> So the American voter at least has a choice: vote in a new president to open up and grow the economy while cutting back the unsustainable rate of government growth, or assume that “they” have done horrible things to the Obama team and thus prevented the president from succeeding — and that Romney in charge would be even worse than the last bad four years.
The more the American people understand the choice, the more I believe will vote for Governor Romney.
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The Not-So-Great Recovery
That does not look good.
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Slow and Steady Wins the Election
> Obama cannot run on his record of Obamacare, a reset foreign policy, Keynesian deficit priming, and the preference of wind and solar power to fully developing vast new finds of oil and gas. What ultimately doomed incumbents Jerry Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H. W. Bush in 1992 was that they likewise did not wish to talk about the economy on their respective watches, but instead alleged that their opponents would be far worse, to the point of being unfit. Such tactics usually don’t work.
I hope Victor Davis Hanson is right. I would be more inclined to agree with him if Governor Romney was actually ahead in he polls. It is always tough to wait and see if the team you are rooting for can actually catch the team in the lead.
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The Youth Vote and Obama
Tom Smith:
> But for young people who presumably want to get jobs and advance in their careers, it really strikes me as false consciousness that they should support O as much as they do. My impression is that the evidence that deregulation and tax cuts usually increase employment and economic growth is pretty overwhelming. I saw this first hand in the Reagan years and it was something to see. I concede our large deficits weaken the case for tax cuts. But it seems to me a vote for O is still a vote for high unemployment, a very devastating thing if you are young and in debt. I feel like I am a witness to a great crime being committed, out of reckless indifference to those harmed, against generations of kids, one I am powerless to stop and they are too ignorant to perceive.
I agree completely. Unfortunately, I have found many people my age are not interested in this particular argument.
> Bottom line: President Obama gives himself an “incomplete” grade on the economy. I would give him a “W” — for wasting four years that America didn’t have to waste.
This article makes me worried for America’s future.
> After all, there is only one way to answer it and retain any credibility. Which is why Maryland’s Democratic governor, Martin O’Malley, when asked, responded, No, we’re not. Within 24 hours, he reversed himself, by all accounts because the Obama campaign forced him to. I haven’t checked the video to see if he was blinking T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code as he did so.
Jonah Goldberg nails it.