Time for another Texas vs. California round-up of how the Lone Star State is kicking the not-so-Golden State’s ass in just about every measure except signing NBA free-agents.
Texas vs. California: First Day of Fall Edition
September 21st, 2012Proposed Romney Ad: Burying the American Dream
September 20th, 2012FADE IN: Long shot of funeral.
CUT TO: Shot of Obama in a black suit standing near an open grave.
Obama: The American Dream enjoyed over 200 years of life.
CUT TO: Men with Obama For America t-shirts with shovels picking up dirt from a pile labeled DEFICIT SPENDING and tossing it down into the grave.
Obama: But it’s time for us to bury it today. It’s outlived its usefulness.
CUT TO: Several young children at the bottom of the grave, already partially buried, as dirt rains down on their heads.
Child: Wait, we’re not dead! Stop burying us!
CUT To: Obama.
Obama: It was a fine dream, but we have to move on to another dream: Of a government welfare state present at every moment of every American’s lives…
CUT TO: Men shoveling in more dirt.
Obama: From the cradle…
CUT TO: Children in hole.
Obama:…to the grave.
Children: Stop! Just give us a chance! We want our dreams too!
CUT TO: Obama.
Obama: Farewell American dream. It was nice while it last.
CUT TO: Children in grave.
Children: Stop! Stop!
CUT TO: Long shot of funeral, as the men continue to fill the grave.
Children: (screaming) STOOOOOOOP!
FADE OUT
Anyone know the best way to send this to Romney, Restore Our Future, or American Crossroads?
Benghazi Attack Mastermind Released from Gitmo?
September 19th, 2012According to reports, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Sufyan Ben Qumu (AKA Sofiane Ibrahim Gammu) “was likely involved in the attack [on Benghazi], and even may have led the attack on the consulate.”
“Qumu—a Libyan—was released from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in 2007 and transferred to Libyan custody under the condition that he would be kept in jail. He wasn’t.”
Another glaring example of why Obama’s pie-in-the-sky promises to close Guantanamo Bay were a bad idea. And so far Obama’s response to an act of war that involved the murder of American government officials has been muted and incoherent.
Like many liberals, Obama just can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that, whether we want to be or not, we’re at war against radical Islam around the globe. These weren’t “spontaneous protests” by random Arabs mysteriously radicalized by a YouTube video, they were planned attacks by radical Islamic terrorists. That is one of the many reasons Obama makes a singularly poor Commander-in-Chief, and why he should be replaced with Mitt Romney.
Add LSU to the “Colleges Threatened by Bomb Threats” List
September 17th, 2012“Louisiana State University’s main campus is being evacuated following a bomb threat.”
Last week was UT, North Dakota State, and Hiram college.
Islamists? Copycats? Pranksters? Who knows?
Until they actually set off a bomb, or pull this sort of thing during the Alabama game on November 3, these bomb threats are all turban and no boom.
Map of Muslim Riots Across the Globe
September 14th, 2012Map of Muslim unrest using Google maps. I think this is updated in real time but I’m not 100% sure.
Update: now embedded:
View Muslim Protests in a larger map
UT Evacuated Due to Bomb Threat
September 14th, 2012The University of Texas has evacuated campus due to a possibly Jihad-related bomb threat.
At 8:35 a.m. the university received a call from a male with a middle eastern accent claiming to have placed bombs all over campus. He said he was with Al Qaeda and these bombs would go off in 90 minutes.
Well, it’s two hours later and no boom. There’s a 99% chance this is an empty threat, since it’s always easier to pick up a phone than to actually make a bomb, as severald dead members of the weather underground can attest.
A similar threat was made at North Dakota State at Fargo.
Updated to add: bomb threat also made at Valparaiso University. UT still still under evacuation warning.
Updated to add 2: UT classes cancelled today and all events cancelled until 5 PM. Buildings can be re-entered as of noon.
Updated to add 3: Add Hiram College in Ohio to list of schools receiving bomb threats. Pretty obscure for Jihadests. Maybe just copycats.
Billionaire Wants Ft. Worth Taxpayers to Pay For His Hobbies
September 12th, 2012Ft. Worth has a $49 million budget deficit. So they’re doing the responsible thing that Texas governments do when faced with budget shortfalls: Cutting back on spending. (Maybe someone should tell California (or Europe) about this radical approach, since no one there seems to be able to cut a budget except at the edge of bankruptcy. And frequently not even then.)
The City of Fort Worth is looking to cut the arts program by 25% which would bring the Arts Council budget to just over $537,000.
Businessman Robert Bass and his wife have are against the budget cuts and argued for funding to be restored before the city council.
Robert Bass is a multi-billionaire. He could pay the amount cut out of his own pocket and it would literally be less than how much his personal wealth fluctuates on the ups and downs of the stock market on any given day. But instead of ponying up, Bass believes that Ft. Worth taxpayers should foot the bill.
You might think that a Texas oil billionaire would be a big Republican contributor. You’d be wrong. Beneficiaries of his contributions in this cycle have been Democrats like Dianne Feinstein, Ben Nelson, and Claire McCaskill. (And his wife Anne was equally generous to Democrats.)
Government exists to carry out those tasks that cannot be carried out by non-governmental organizations (defense, courts, etc.). Government should let individuals voluntarily fund the arts out of their own pockets rather than forcing taxpayers to pick up the bill. If Robert Bass wants art organizations in Ft. Worth to be funded, all he has to do is write a check, not demand taxpayers pay for his hobbies.
Dispatches from the Land of Smart Diplomacy: Islamists Storm American Embassy in Cairo
September 11th, 2012I think those parallels between the Carter and Obama Administrations are getting a bit too close for comfort. It’s gone from homage to plagiarism.
Radical Islamists storm American embassy in unstable Middle East country. I’m sure that’s not a headline anyone in the Obama Administration wanted to see less than two months before election day.
Hey, didn’t Obama make a speech in Cairo a few years back? Remember how liberal commentators hailed it as “masterful” and “inspiring”?
Remember all that talk of smart diplomacy?
Now? Not so much.
Hey the Middle East is hard. It’s very, very easy to get things wrong. But it wasn’t any easier when Bush was President, and I don’t remember his liberal critics cutting him any slack.
I also don’t remember Islamsists storming an American embassy while he was President.
Asking the Important Questions: Presidential Knife Fight Edition
September 10th, 2012“In a mass knife fight to the death between every American President, who would win and why?”
Got to agree on Teddy Roosevelt. The man was just indomitable.
(Hat tip: Ace)
Polling in Perspective (or: Chill)
September 10th, 2012This is the time of year when the political world is awash in polls. Some otherwise sensible Republicans take a look at those polls and go “Oh my God! Obama is up by 2! Or 5! He got a big convention bounce!”
I could wade into the murky swamps of different polling companies, different methodologies, different biases, the problem with cell phone vs. landline samples, partisan weighting screens, the comparison between citizens, registered voters and likely voters, or a dozen other variables. But I’m not going to.
Instead, one piece of advice, and one explanation.
The advice: Chill.
The explanation: Barack Obama was elected in 2008 with 52.9% of the popular vote to 45.7% for John McCain, the best popular vote margin of any Democratic Presidential contender since Lyndon Baines Johnson captured 61.1% of the vote in 1964. (People forget that Bill Clinton, for all his retrospective popularity, never broke 50% of the popular vote; Al Gore got 48.4% of the vote while losing in the electoral college in 2000.) Ignoring (for now) the electoral college and minor changes in the composition of voters, that means only 4% of the people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 need to switch their vote for Mitt Romney to win.
Do you think Obama might be 4% less popular than he was four years ago? Perhaps among those who have lost their jobs? There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that Obama is less popular than he was four years ago, his inability to fill campaign events the way he used to being one, and numerous elected Democrats in tough reelection fights avoiding the DNC being another. So who are you going to believe: MSM polls or your lying eyes?
The media is desperately trying to pretend that 2010 never happened, or that it was an aberration.
The polls are part of the media trying desperately to maintain what Instapundit Glenn Reynolds calls “preference falsification,” a willingness on the part of the political and media establishment to manufacture a false consensus that (in this case) liberal policies and politicians are popular. When it comes to the current election, the question might be most crassly boiled down to “Do you support Obama, or are you a racist?” In 2010 and now we’re finally seeing a “preference cascade” of people unwilling to buy that liberal narrative. The walls are finally coming down.
Which is not to say the election is in the bag for Romney. There’s still a lot of hard work to be done, and a lot of work to make sure Republicans and anti-Obama independents get to the polls, especially in swing states. But there’s no reason to get worked up over each and every little poll. Time is not on Obama’s side.