To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Headline from New York: Subway crimes, including felonies, rise sharply since last year.
Never fear, totally in touch billionaire presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is on the job:
Like a sandwich shop vigilante.
(Tweet seen on Instapundit.)
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A Hillary Clinton tweet:
Whatever language you speak, you should feel welcome in America. pic.twitter.com/atdAyenhnT
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 4, 2015
You know, in Spanish, hablar is the infinitive version of speak.
That is, it is literally to speak
Directly translated, Hillary’s social media expert’s sentiment is:
Freedom means being able to to speak in any language you want.
The badly is implied.
(Link via Ace of Spades HQ.)
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Senator McCaskill is upset:
Sen. Claire McCaskill is challenging a decision in the Air Force to release a colonel who had begun serving a prison sentence after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in his home.
In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this morning, McCaskill grilled the head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, about the conviction and release of Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, an F-16 pilot who had become an inspector general at a U.S. base in Italy.
“My heart is beating fast right now I am so upset about this,” McCaskill, D-Mo., said at the hearing.
Sen. Claire McCaskill is challenging a decision in the Air Force to release a colonel who had begun serving a prison sentence after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in his home.
. . . .
The Air Force Times reported on Monday that a jury of four colonels and a lieutenant colonel had sentenced Wilkerson to a year in prison and dismissal from the Air Force after finding him guilty of sexually assaulting an American physician’s assistant.
But the conviction was reversed last week by Third Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin after he concluded that there had been insufficient evidence.
McCaskill was strangely silent on the Department of Homeland Security’s recent release of thousands.
But then again, McCaskill grandstands as a watchdog of the military, not a watchdog of administrations controlled by her political party.
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Charles Krauthammer, today: The Obama doctrine: Leading from behind:
Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.”
— Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker, May 2 issue
To be precise, leading from behind is a style, not a doctrine. Doctrines involve ideas, but since there are no discernible ones that make sense of Obama foreign policy — Lizza’s painstaking two-year chronicle shows it to be as ad hoc, erratic and confused as it appears — this will have to do.
Remember, way back in February, I offhandedly called him “Hindmost Obama.”
This is more relevant if you’ve read the Ringworld novels, I suppose.
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Author with new book out ties his name to Sarah Palin’s, Ronald Reagan’s.
Well-played. Well-played. Hope to see you on SNL this weekend, again dancing in your underwear as you struggle to remain relevant to your own ego.
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They said Barack Obama could perform miracles, and lo! He has made this circle into a square:
One closing remark that I want to make: It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we’ve got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.
The Republican Party has moved to the right of George W. Bush, and yet wants to impose the policies of the person whose policies the party has moved to the right of.
Say what you will about the President promising to stop the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet, but he certainly imposes his will upon mere logic.
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Nancy Pelosi: “I will still be Speaker in five weeks.”
Yes, luv, some of us who are paying attention know you will be Speaker of the House until January, 2011. Whereupon some Republican will take the gavel and hopefully will have the class to not strike muscle-flexing poses immediately.
We’re the type of citizen she probably fears most: Understands civics, can perform basic arithmetic, and has a memory longer than 30 days.
(Cross-posted at 24th State. Link seen here.)
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Exclusive! Must credit MfBJN!
Watch for more breaking truths as I invent them!
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It’s funny, but this election year, I see Senatorial candidate names in the news in articles not relating to the candidate in question.
That cannot be helpful, particularly in the last case, where Robin Carnahan shares the name with a murderer in her own state.
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Not only is Lilith Fair canceling tour dates, but prices are greatly reduced at the Obama/Carnahan Show in Kansas City:
Obama is heading to MO and NV today to raise money for Sec/State Robin Carnahan (D), running for an open Senate seat, and Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid.
But Carnahan’s campaign wasn’t able to completely sell out the Folly Theater, where Obama will appear for a grassroots event on Carnahan’s behalf, at the prices they wanted. Tickets once priced at $250 are now going for $99, while $35 tickets are half off.
Perhaps if they added another headliner to the event, like Sheryl Crow.
(Link seen on Hot Air.)
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24th State highlights a “flip-flop” by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill:
So let me get this straight. In March, she gets to send press releases to the Post Dispatch talking about her frustration and the offensive Jim Bunning who had the brashness to suggest they figure out a way to cut spending before tacking on tens of billions to the deficit.
In June, she does the same thing Bunning does, actually going so far as to vote against the very unpaid benefits she was saying were necessary three months ago, and now she’s a budget hawk?
Politicians don’t do what they think the constituents want. They do what the newspapers will report favorably. They’ve held themselves accountable only to the press, whom they thought reflected the public. Unfortunately, that disparity has grown quite a bit and the public is more aware of it than ever. Whereas politicians could count on the short memories of the press in the past, they’re going to awaken in a new world where the public pays attention over a long period of time and remembers what the politician did yesterday or last year, not just what the press reported that the politician did just before the election.
Ha! I’m kidding. The current crop of politicians will wake up looking for lobbyist jobs, and their replacements will be aware of the 21st century world they inhabit and whom they serve in it.
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Embattled Florida Governor Charlie Crist has left the Republican Party and his senses (two different things) in his bid to become a Senator for the state of Florida by any means necessary. He’s shedding his conservative followers by shredding his conservative principles, and no one thinks he’s much of a man anymore. Except him, maybe.
However, I’ve got the only strategy that remains for him to get elected: Make people confuse him with New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
Charlie Crist. Chris Christie. It could work.
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This NPR piece about a potential primary challenge to Obama in 2012 is pretty serious, but when I got to the punchline, I knew it was all a setup:
The candidate most likely to try to dethrone the king may not have really emerged yet. As editors at NPR keep shouting, it’s too early to be talking like this. But what if there is some Palin-like politician lurking in the wings out there whom we haven’t even thought of? Maybe someone who is a combination of former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and the Sisters Sanchez (congresswomen Loretta and Linda) of California. Someone who just may be known as the Next Barack Obama.
Woo! You had me going there. Senator McCaskill might as well take a flier on it, though, since she’s probably going to leave elected government in January 2013.
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Citizens have little faith in the elected government and more confidence in their military, and here’s a general considering a presidential run:
U.S. Gen. David Petraeus is being strongly suggested as the Republican presidential candidate to stand against Barack Obama in 2012.
Speculation is growing that the shrewd and articulate commander credited with turning around the Iraq war is contemplating a run for the White House.
Haven’t I heard a variation of this story before?
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Two tabs in my browser today hold the following stories right next to each other.
Lingerie model runs one of world’s largest drug gangs, according to police:
An international arrest warrant has been issued for the 30-year-old, who is suspected of recruiting beautiful women and using them to move drugs to Europe and North America.
Many of these women are believed to be other lingerie and glamour models who compete in international beauty pageants, whom Valencia describes as “unsuspicious, beautiful angels”.
(Link courtesy of Dustbury.)
What’s really behind the departure of Desiree Rogers from Obama’s White House:
And today….
…the weeding began. Desiree Rogers, the White House Social Secretary who was such a close Chicago pal of both Obama and his wife Michelle, is gone as of next month.
(Link seen on Instapundit.)
No connection between the two stories, of course, except a sniggering conspiracy theory in the making. Or maybe a plot for a paperback novel.
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The February 2010 American History has an interview with an expert on the comparative styles of presidential leadership. It’s not available online, so you’ll have to take my word for it when I say that the Frost’s dictum about poems can also apply to analysis. You know, all poems are a descent into Hell, and the first line tells you how deep you’re going to go.
Can Obama achieve his sweeping goals?
His concilliatory approach and tendency to move to the middle ground have profound limitations in today’s polarized political climate.
Okay, we’re going in deep here. How deep?
Which early president does Obama resemble the most?
He is probably most like Thomas Jefferson, in his intellectuality and his fluency–although Jefferson’s fluency was with the written, not the spoken word.
Oh, my. So reading the words that someone else has written off of a teleprompter is just the same as writing the Declaration of Independence.
Further evidence as to why we cannot leave history to the historians, I suppose.
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Scott Brown, candidate for Senator in Massachusetts, supported RomneyCare:
So he’s the Republican hero of the day. But if he’s elected, and if he holds the seat for more than one term, he will be a RINO subject to purging in 20 years when the more conservative among the party want more purity in the party.
(Link seen on Hot Air.)
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Sotomayor is not a reactionary ogre like Scalia or Roberts. She’s a glamorous celebrity!
Since becoming the first Hispanic justice, Sotomayor has mamboed with movie stars, exchanged smooches with musicians at the White House and thrown out the first pitch for her beloved New York Yankees. A famous jazz composer even wrote a song about her: “Wise Latina Woman.”
In short, Sotomayor has become a celebrity — all without having made a single major decision at the nation’s highest court.
It’s not that other justices don’t have their own particular glamour.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia — both opera lovers — recently had roles in the opening performance of “Ariadne auf Naxos” for the Washington National Opera. Other justices have done tours to promote their books.
But that kind of fame rarely reaches the man on the street.
Remember, man on the street means peasant. Do you feel touched, peasant?
I especially like this bit:
Celebrity and powerful position without any actual accomplishment. Does it sound like anyone else we know?
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Do you think there’s a problem with this?
Darin Cline, Dooley’s one-time campaign director who was appointed to the county job of director of intergovernmental affairs in 2007, said the move had nothing to do with persistent rumors that he was the subject of any federal investigation into county government.
I’m not talking about his leaving nor the rumors of corruption. I marvel that the St. Louis County government has a highly paid staff position whose sole purpose (and his whole staff’s sole purpose) is to lobby other governments for money.
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Obama’s approval rating drops among whites:
New surveys show steep declines in Obama’s approval ratings among whites, including Democrats and independents, who were crucial elements of the diverse coalition that helped elect the country’s first black president.
The article poses its own push-poll style point, that whites are abandoning Obama–because of race? However, it would be just as sound to ask, “Are blacks sticking with Obama because he’s black?”
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