So Mitt Romney’s campaign has taken Obama’s yawning gaffe and run with it, producing a dozy of an ad called “These Hands”:
I like it!
But people calling it “the best political ad in 30 years” are overselling it. Even if you’re just looking at Presidential ads, there are several I think are a lot more effective.
Here’s the Dukakis Tank ad from George H. W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign:
Here’s Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s devastating ad against John Kerry, using his own words against him in 2004:
(By the way, whenever you hear someone on the left saying that one of their candidates has been “swiftboated,” it means is “Republicans have attacked them effectively with the truth.”)
Accused Plano bomber Anson Chi was denied bail at a hearing at which he testified on his own behalf. I don’t see anyone placing any sort of credibility on his claims that some of his wounds were due to being tortured by police while in the hospital. Various testimony adds a lot more to the “walking time-bomb” file:
[FBI agent Brian] Carroll described Chi as “anti-government, anti-technology, anti-big business, pro-environmentalist (and) slightly anarchist.”
“He said he was tired of armchair activists and wanted to have this in the bank to prove he was a real activist,” Carroll said.
One wonder what sort of “activism” Chi thought he was displaying. Anti-gas-pipeline activism? I fail to see how blowing up a pipeline would fight the Federal Reserve, the IRS, or genetically modified food (all noted Chi concerns).
Testifying for the defense, Chi’s parents said they were OK with him living at home if the judge agreed to release him and would notify police immediately if he broke any rules.
But the testimony also seemed to backfire.
His father, Swia Chenn Chi, said he often fought with his son and was so afraid of him he once called the police.
“If we don’t agree, he usually goes wild,” the father testified. “I was so afraid he would take the gun and point it at me … I wished the police would (have taken) his gun away, but they never did.”
The FBI said agents recovered two pistols and three shotguns from the family’s Plano house, in addition to bomb-making chemicals and hardware in a search hours after the explosion.
Chi’s father said he was upset with his son because he hadn’t worked for several years.
“He’s such a grown-up man,” Swia Chenn Chi said of his 33-year-old son. “He’s not handicapped but he doesn’t work so he makes me disappointed.”
An adult refusing to look for a job fits the Occupy mold a lot more than your typical Ron Paul supporter. It also fits in with Chi’s posting the “Disappointed Asian Father” images on his Facebook page, like this one:
In addition to the bomb-making materials and instructions, agents found three shotguns and two 40-caliber semi-automatic handguns at the Chi home. They found books on domestic terrorism and technological slavery. They also found $2,000 hidden in a spray can with a false bottom, as well as euros and Asian currency.
Carroll detailed Chi’s extensive travel in recent years, including trips to Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Records show that Chi crossed into Mexico 20 times on foot and that he was denied entry into Canada last year, Carroll testified.
I’m not a big fan of the IRS, and as a fan of small government I have a bit of sympathy for tax protestors. But that sympathy is tempered by the fact that the theories by which they deduce the federal income tax is unconstitutional range from the almost certainly wrong to the completely ludicrous. And further evidence that they’re mistaken is the frequency with which they end up in prison.
Chi also posted a copy of this well-known video depicting soccer fans overwhelming police over their excessive use of violence. I’m all for exposing and punishing police brutality, but when Chi comments “Watch the police (pigs) get what they deserve—oink!” once again he gives that Occupy-tainted whiff of throwback 1960s radicalism. Not everyone who called police pigs in the 1960s built bombs, but virtually 100% of the 1960s bomb builders (The Weatherman Underground, etc.) would be found among their ranks.
He also links to a 9/11 Truther video, which does not speak well of his credulity.
Since July is July 4th, let’s celebrate the day with a glimpse at one of the most impressive weapons in the American arsenal of democracy: The M1A2 Abrams tank.
(Not my videos, and some have music and/or NSFW langauge.)
What it’s like inside loading the M1A2’s 120mm smoothbore main gun:
Even though I’ve endorsed Ted Cruz, I think it only fair to point out that Dewhurst has, in fact, constantly stated that he’s in favor of repealing ObamaCare pretty much since he joined the Senate race. (I even used the Wayback machine to verify it.) However, Cruz has been more fervent and articulate in campaigning against ObamaCare, making the phrase “repeal every syllable of every word of Obamacare” one of his stock talking points from the very beginning of his campaign. He’s also discussed the 10th Amendment reasons why ObamaCare is unconstitutional, something that I don’t recall Dewhurst doing. (Dewhurst has mentioned the 10th Amendment in support of the Texas Voter ID law.)
Cruz’s worry (which I think is legitimate) is that Dewhurst might be willing to compromise on ObamaCare. And I could easily see Dewhurst signing on with some “Group of 14” (or whatever) to needlessly save ObamaCare despite a Republican House, Senate, and White House, rather than push for full repeal.
Which is why this rings a little hollow to me:
But unlike some of Dewhurst’s other ads, at least that one probably won’t cost him votes…
Here’s the video of last week’s Cruz-Dewhurst debate:
The Dewhurst campaign is pointing to this Cruz appearance on the Dan Patrick show as evidence Cruz is a hothead:
34 minutes? No time to listen tonight…
And here’s still another journalist opining that the mid-Summer runoff date will mean. Memo to the MSM: IT’S TEXAS! IT’S HOT! WE’RE FREAKING USE TO IT!
Grady Yarbrough and Paul Sadler also debated last week. Yarbrough said he supported a border wall, saying that the Berlin Wall was effective. Hmmm, I don’t think I would have made that analogy…
Speaking of things I’m not watching tonight, here’s KERA’s embeddable video of the Democratic debate:
More on the Democratic debate. Another summary. My summary of those two summaries: Yarbrough wants a border wall and legal pot, and Sadler is against both of those. Sadler does actually say the national debt is too high.
I haven’t been doing much coverage of Fast and Furious, mainly because bloggers like Sipsey Street and Snowflakes in Hell/Shall Not Be Questioned were doing such good jobs moving the story forward I didn’t feel a need. But now that the Obama Administration is in full cover-up mode, well, bring the swarm.
Remember: Over 200 innocent people have died due to Fast and Furious. So when liberals tell you that “It’s not Watergate,” they’re right. It’s much worse.
I put off putting up the latest Texas Senate race update until the Republican Party of Texas convention in Ft. Worth concluded. Good thing, too, since a lot of news came out of it, almost none of which was good for Dewhurst, but some of this news may be a bit old.
Ted Cruz appears on Fox News:
Dewhurst claims he wants more than five debates with Cruz. Since Dewhurst did extremely poorly in the ones he did have, color me skeptical.
The Cruz campaign says it’s raised a lot more Texas contributors and small donors than Dewhurst does. While I think they’re probably correct, honesty compels me to point out that comparing Cruz’s internal June 4 donation stats with Dewhurst’s May 17 FEC stats is not an apples-to-apples comparison for many reasons, not last of which is that FEC reports only show donations over $200, so the 69 number for “donations under $250” is simply misleading. (When I pointed this out to the Cruz campaign, they noted that Dewhurst is free to release his own small-donor statistics. Which is true.)
A look at various reasons Dewhurst couldn’t win without a runoff. Ahem: “Just about everybody bet on Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to win outright.” yeah, Ross Ramsey, everyone except those of us who were actually paying attention to the race.
And as far as I can tell looking at the stats on his official page, the most people who have listened to any David Dewhurst YouTube radio interview posted in the last month is…35.
Still more Wisconsin recall tidbits continue to trickle out. I may have a more substantial reaction to a particularly egregious type of liberal self-delusion regarding the results later, but here’s a nice sampler of links:
“Public employee unions insist that dues money be deducted from members’ paychecks and sent directly to union treasuries. So in practice, public employee unions are a mechanism for the involuntary transfer of taxpayers’ money to the Democratic Party.”
The unions’ defeat marks a historical inflection point. They set out to make an example of Walker. He succeeded in making an example of them as a classic case of reactionary liberalism. An institution founded to protect its members grew in size, wealth, power and arrogance, thanks to decades of symbiotic deals with bought politicians, to the point where it grossly overreached. A half-century later these unions were exercising essential control of everything from wages to work rules in the running of government — something that, in a system of republican governance, is properly the sovereign province of the citizenry.
“The left picked this fight, on the issue and in the place of its choice; it chose to recall Walker because it believed it could win a showcase victory. That judgment was fatally flawed.”
The Walker reforms hurt AFSCME in Wisconsin almost as badly as Ronald Reagan hurt PATCO, the air traffic controller union he famously crushed in 1981. Public sector workers have deserted their unions in droves since the state clipped union bargaining rights and stopped automatic collection of dues. After a string of bitter, humiliating and expensive defeats, labor in Wisconsin will now be a shadow of its former self, lacking the troops, the money and the morale.
The public sector unions are critical to what remains of the American left. The power of the public service unions in Democratic politics pulls the entire party to the left and gives ideas that are important to the left an access to power that they would otherwise lack. But more important than that, they provide a kind of center to a movement that otherwise threatens to fragment into antagonistic cliques.
It is not clear the left was outspent in its attempts to reverse Gov. Walker’s reforms. And the widely-repeated claim that the left was outspent by more than 7-to-1 in the most recent recall election is clearly false.
I may have a more comprehensive roundup of reactions later, but for now let’s enjoy the rich, zesty aroma of liberals going down in defeat in the battle they choose.
First up, scoring a weepy 10 on the Drama Queen Schadenfreude scale, is this extremely pale recall supporter proclaiming how Walker’s victory is “the end of democracy”:
How upset were Barrett’s liberal supporters? One of them was upset enough to slap Barrett, the candidate she was supporting, for conceding:
Here’s DNCC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the gift that keeps giving to Republicans, on how no one can match their grassroots organization:
I’m well aware that politics is a blood sport. The “working for Communist China” smear was pretty weak sauce, but at least there was a tiny grain of truth there. But the amnesty smear was just made up out of whole cloth. Neither Cruz, nor the groups mentioned, ever supported illegal alien amnesty. David Dewhurst and Team Dewhurst were simply liars to push it. Now the MSM confirms what anyone paying attention already knew.
But to drive the point home even further, never mind Polifact, here’s the Sex Pistols (NSFW. Duh.):
