Despite union threats to throw twice as big a hissy fit as Wisconsin liberals, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed right-to-work legislation today, breaking the union stranglehold on jobs in the state. As in Wisconsin, expect union members to start keeping their own money in droves rather than give it to union bosses and the Democratic party.
In related news, peaceful union protestors stood aghast as aggressive Steve Crowder repeatedly drove his menacing face into an innocent Michigan union member’s Fist of Happiness:
What I find revealing about the choice of Roy is that Cruz–who has been making noise as a potential contender for the White House in 2016–appears to be putting his chips on the tea party as the future of the Republican party. In doing so, he is aligning himself with insurgents like Rand Paul and, of course, the chief insurgent, Jim DeMint, who helped fund Cruz’s Senate race.
Is this a good bet? I’m dubious. The tea party has a lot in common with the old Ross Perot “United We Stand” bunch. These groups seldom have staying power. Granted, the Kochs’ involvement makes the tea party’s survival more likely, at least in the short run, but in the establishment almost always prevails. It may prove to be the case, though, that Cruz is so appealing that he can transcend the factionalism in the Republican party. The strength of the Republican field in 2016 is that it is filled with big names: Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee. Only Rubio and Cruz qualify as fresh faces, though, and that might be where the rank-and-file look first.
Wait, let me get this straight: A conservative Republican Senator-elect, who worked at a conservative think tank, ran as a conservative, courted conservatives, and beat the overwhelming favorite establishment candidate while pledging to govern as a conservative, has now chosen…a conservative chief of staff?
Sadly, Burka misunderstanding conservatives is nothing new. The idea that conservatives truly believe in low taxes, balanced budgets, and limited government seems entirely alien to Burka. When it comes to describing inter-Republican-Party dynamics, he’s like a color-blind man trying to describe The Wizard of Oz.
And so instead of reaching the obvious conclusion, that Ted Cruz chose a conservative chief of staff because he’s a conservative, Burka prefers to envision imaginary 2016 horse-race jockeying.
First up, Unions kill Hostess. By calling a strike against a company that was already in bankruptcy, against the advice of the Teamsters, who had already taken a look at the Hostess books, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union ensured that instead of a 6% pay cut, unionized workers would take a 100% pay cut. Way to go, unions!
Israel still seems to be gearing up for a ground offensive in Gaza. And by firing rockets at Tel Aviv, Hamas pretty much guarantees that the only faction in Israeli politics urging restraint will retink their position. “I get a lot less liberal when you want to kill me.”
Lefties are trying to boycott Papa Johns for daring to lay people off because of ObamaCare. “If this is anything like the Chick-fil-A buycott, and you want Papa John’s for dinner, you’d better get your order in now.” It’s amazing that any business in America ever has to declare bankruptcy, given there are so many liberals around who can tell them exactly how much profit they “need”…
Former general and former CIA head David Petraeus testifies on Benghazi. He says his report said the attack was launched by al Qaeda, but higher-ups in the Obama Administration deleted the reference. The more we hear about Benghazi, the more it appears that Fox News was right.
I expect Ted Cruz to beat Paul Sadler handily (and here’s my endorsement of Cruz). Later today I hope to have a prediction up on just how well I expect him to do.
Sadler finally buys some ads a week before the election. Note how Robert T. Garrett references the previous item, but doesn’t have the decency to link to it.
I was going to have an insightful, data-filed post on the Texas 23rd Congressional district race, but then I realized that the Los Angeles Times data I was relying on flipped at least one bit of information (NRA-ILA is doing independent expenditures against Pete Gallego, not against Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco), which means I can’t trust the rest. Super executive summary: Canseco has a huge cash on-hand advantage, $785,623 to $23,250, but assuming the other LA Times numbers are right, the independent expenditure race is a lot closer to even.
Now on to a LinkSwarm a week before the election:
Obama is clearly winning the race for military endorsements, having 6 endorsements to Romney’s paltry 359.
Given that Miklosi has raised about half of what his Republican opponent incumbent Mike Coffman has for the Colorado Sixth Congressional District race, but only has about one-fifth the cash on hand, Livoti seems to have retained his magic touch.
It seems that during the divorce proceeding of Staples founder founder Tom Stemberg 20 years ago, Mitt Romney may have misvalued the profit potential for shares of Staples, with the result that the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo. While the congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events—
Oh wait, sorry, I accidentally spaced out for a moment and started channeling the opening crawl from The Phantom Menace, probably because it was the only thing I could think of less interesting than a stock valuation issue from a 20-year old divorce proceeding. Indeed, if the general public is given a choice between ancient divorce/stock value questions, or Jar Jar Binks reciting The Federalist Papers, then meesa thinksa yousa gonna be called ona to deliberate ona thisa newa Constitution!
This is a game-changer only if the game is “see if you can bore yourself to sleep.” A real game-changer would be something like “In Baghdad in 1990, Tom Stemberg, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and I all snorted blow off Fawn Hall’s ass.” That’s about as likely as Mila Kunis showing up on my doorstep asking to be my love slave. The whole reason Mitt is poised to win this thing (beside Obama’s mind-numbing incompetence and the senses-dulling numbness of the Liberal Reality Bubble) is because he’s no fun at parties. If he had any real baggage New Gingrich’s opposition people would have unpacked it a long time ago. He’s so clean he squeaks, which must infuriate Obama’s dirty tricks team to no end. “Damn your clean nose and upright moral values, you vile Mormon!”
Sure, illegally unsealing an opponent’s divorce records is Obama’s finishing move, but given the distinct lack of any prurient interest angle, even the most devoted Journolista will struggle to breath life into this pathetic non-scandal.
Over at The Atlantic, Derek Thompson has a piece up laying the blame for Newsweek’son the economy. “This is an economic story, plain and simple. The print news business is grim and hardly needs a lengthy explication.” Well, I’m sure the economy didn’t help. But the story of Newsweek‘s demise is not that plain, nor that simple.
I was going to laboriously track down magazine circulation data, enter it into Excel, and create a chart. Then I found that State of the Media had done it for me:
Notice how Time, Newsweek‘s chief competitor, starts sucking wind before the recession hits full force, then stabilizes, while Newsweek goes into freefall, then continues? In fact, Newsweek‘s nosedive gets steeper in 2009, right about the time the recession was bottoming out around the New Obama Normal. What could have happened then?
They practically came out and said they weren’t interested in conservatives reading their magazine. The chart above tells you how well that decision worked out for them.
As I said yesterday, Newsweek‘s demise is a case of assisted suicide. They had a choice between being profitable and being liberal, and they chose liberal.
Today Newsweek announced that they were ceasing print publication and going all digital. For a national general-interest weekly news-magazine, that’s tantamount to saying that you’re dead but you don’t feel like lying down just yet.
Back in 2009, you may remember Newsweek‘s decision to remake itself as a liberal opinion weekly, an odd financial choice in a country where conservatives outnumber liberals nearly 2-to-1. Since then Newsweek has managed the amazing feat of hemorrhaging readers faster than other print publications. Then the Washington Post company decided to sell the venerable newsweekly to Sidney Harman for $1, screwing its shareholders but keeping the magazine’s money-losing liberal slant under Tina Brown’s editorship. Hired to steer the ship around the iceberg, Brown instead decided to teach the iceberg who’s boss by ramming it a few more times.
Vast swathes of legacy print media are in trouble in the Internet-era, but Newsweek‘s demise is more like an assisted suicide than a graceful decline. It’s like a Type II diabetic who had already lost three toes deciding to immediately go on a diet consisting entirely of ice cream.
Newsweek had a choice between being profitable and being liberal, and they chose liberal.
Journalist shocked that all his fellow journalists are suddenly spewing vitriol at him and calling him a traitor because he’s decided to vote for Romney. Also confirms the overwhelming liberal bias in the newsroom.
Police arrest members of the Mexican Mafia prison gang across the state, including one police officer in Houston who was providing them guns.
Lots of commentators said that Joe Biden did better debating against Paul Ryan than Obama did against Mitt Romney. I found Biden the far more irritating of the two, his his constant grinning and interrupting. He was like some weird, glad-handing political coelecanth that had somehow survived into the 21st century, and didn’t realize how fake his antics look on high def television. (And that’s to say nothing of Biden’s outright lies. No evidence of green pork cronyism? Right. Pull the other one.)
This unsigned Houston Chronicle liveblog tries to be evenhanded, but dings Biden for his jackassery. “Biden’s contempt for his rival is palpable. Biden’s constant interruptions and grinning and head shaking could turn off some viewers.”
The Weekly Standardnotes that “You don’t win a nationally televised debate by being rude and obnoxious. You don’t win by interrupting your opponent time after time after time or by being a blowhard. You don’t win with facial expressions, especially smirks or fake laughs, or by pretending to be utterly exasperated with what your opponent is saying.”
NRO’s Yuval Levin thinks that “Biden’s hyper-aggressive and at times buffoonish performance (and perhaps especially his Joker grin, which seemed to me as much a product of nervousness as of intent) hurt the ticket some with independent voters and especially with women,” but also thinks he did what he needed to do (stop the liberal bleeding).
By contrast, NRO compatriot John O’Sullivan thinks Biden won on points, but as engendered a “hostile reaction from women to his amazingly blatant mugging and grinning at the camera during Ryan’s arguments.”
Forbes also wasn’t impressed with Biden: “Television provided split screens, so while viewers saw Ryan calmly responding to the questions that came his way, on the other half of the screen they saw a batty older man laughing obnoxiously at someone who, even if voters disagree with him, comes off as very reasonable. The contrast can’t have worked in Biden’s favor.”
The Daily Gator says that Biden was “rude, condescending, and acted like a bully. Biden did not make any glaring gaffes, but, how he conducted himself might have been more damaging. His over the top smiles, really creepy smiles to be honest, his constant interruptions, which the moderator did nothing to stop, and his other facial gymnastics made him look like a man with nothing to say.”
Best tweet of the night (from Dave Itzkoff): “I’m told Joe Biden was just a small-time hood before Batman dropped him in the vat of chemicals that left him with a permanent grin.”
This RNC ad spliced together from last night’s debate already has over a quarter-million hits:
And finally, complete video of the debate in case you missed it:
