Monthly Archives: July 2012
July 30, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here about the criminal prosecution of John Terry, the English soccer star who was charged with calling an opposing player, Anton Ferdinand, a f______ black c___ during a dustup in a contentious match. Terry was acquitted because the Crown couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Terry racially abused Ferdinand. The English Football Association is now trying to decide whether to punish Terry (who already has been removed
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July 30, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel has gone well, and should help him recover a bit from the rocky beginning to his voyage abroad. In England, Romney offended the Brits. Even though the offending comments were justified, Romney shouldn’t have made them. Britain is a key ally. In Israel, as Politico reports, Romney offended Palestinian leaders. Again, his comments were on the mark, as I’ll discuss in a moment. But this
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July 30, 2012 — John Hinderaker
In the last 48 hours, I have received emails from representatives of the Democratic Party with the following subject lines: “nightmare,” “disaster” and “Romney defeats Obama?” Which is, of course, the nightmare and the disaster. Those headlines give you a pretty good idea of what the Democrats are seeing in their internal polling. Here is “nightmare,” authored by Democratic consultant James Carville: From: James Carville Subject: nightmare I wish I
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July 30, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Newsweek Magazine wants us to think so. Its latest cover blares: “Romney: The Wimp Factor — Is He Just Too Insecure To Be President?” Along with the rest of the politically hyper-conscious, I’ve been observing Mitt Romney for years. I’ve also interviewed him one-on-one and read a comprehensive biography of the man by two Boston Globe writers. There is much to like about the Romney, but he also has some
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July 30, 2012 — John Hinderaker
If last week’s tweet by Beth Myers is a guide, Tim Pawlenty is on Mitt Romney’s short list of possible vice-presidential candidates. As I’ve often said, I think Pawlenty would be an excellent choice. Mark Kennedy agrees. Mark served three terms in the House of Representatives and has known and worked with Pawlenty for twenty years. Mark is now the Director and Professor of the Graduate School of Political Management
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July 30, 2012 — John Hinderaker
The Daily Caller has a preview of an explosive claim contained in a book by Richard Miniter that will be published next month: Before finally approving the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, President Obama blocked it three times: At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL
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July 30, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Over the weekend we wrote about White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer’s meltdown, in which he accused Charles Krauthammer of retailing a falsehood about Obama’s (notorious) return of winston Churchill’s bust to the Brits in January 2009. Obama’s return of Churchill’s bust was a story that was widely reported at the time. Did Pfeiffer somehow miss it? Within hours of Pfeiffer’s post on Friday the British embassy in Washington confirmed
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July 30, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Obama’s Roanoke declaration continues to pay big dividends — for Mitt Romney. It gives voters an illuminating contrast between the candidates, and provokes some to step forth with declarations of their own. In the ad below, the Romney campaign turns the microphone over to Ohio’s Dennis Sollman of Sollman Electric. Quotable quote: “I mean, I’m thinking, you’ve gotta be kidding me…”
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July 29, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
On Friday, George Will wrote a harrowing column about the Justice Department’s prosecution — courtesy of the Environmental Crimes Division — of Nancy Black, a marine biologist. Black captains a whale watching ship. Finding herself under investigation for “harassment” of a marine mammal, the alleged harassment consisting of whistling at whales to keep them near the ship for a while, she submitted a tape of the incident. Black edited the
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July 29, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
For the past few weeks it’s been looking like Ted Cruz has the edge over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Texas Republican Senate primary ranoff. This would be an upset because Dewhurst ran well ahead of Cruz in the initial primary. However, as some of our most astute readers told me just after the primary, Cruz’s advantage in voter enthusiasm would make him competitive, at a minimum, in the
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July 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Fox News has posted the video and text of Mitt Romney’s speech in Jerusalem this afternoon. I’m posting the Fox video below. Please consult Barry Rubin’s excellent gloss on the speech in conjunction with your viewing of the whole (17-minute) shebang. It is a valuable guide to what is going on here.
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July 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
CNN’s ratings are in the toilet, and its president resigned last week. The network’s defenders say the problem is that it is an objective, “just the facts” network, in an era when most viewers prefer the partisan approaches they can get from Fox and MSNBC. But no one who actually watches CNN buys that. Scott and I have both written about the horror of being trapped at an airplane gate,
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July 29, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Well now: Richard Muller’s sneak peak of his latest findings from the BEST project due out tomorrow have run headlong into Anthony Watts’ latest study of the surface temperature record, posted up on his WattsUpWithThat site at 3 pm eastern time today. Watts’ conclusion is indeed s bombshell if it proves out: that the U.S. surface temperature rise has been overestimated by a factor of two: The new analysis demonstrates that
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July 29, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu have had their share of, shall we say, differences of opinion. The latest concerns the efficacy of sanctions against Iran. This morning on ABC, President Obama’s mouthpiece Robert Gibbs claimed that “we have made progress in delaying [Iran's] nuclear program.” “Our goal,” he added “is to prevent Iran from having a nuclear program and I think we’re making progress on that.” But Netanyahu, the world
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July 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Daniel Pipes’s judgment about the Middle East is as good as anyone’s, so I was interested to see what he thought about Mitt Romney’s Jerusalem speech. In a word, he was impressed. Pipes writes on Romney’s Remarkable Speech in Jerusalem: Mitt Romney, the all-but-official Republican presidential candidate, delivered a stem-winder of a speech to the Jerusalem Foundation today, packing emotional support with frank policy statements. The contrast with Obama could
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July 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Legendary songwriter Dan Penn returns to the Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis for shows this coming Sunday and Monday, August 5 and 6. Penn’s site is here; his bio is here. The show is an almost unbelievable review of Penn’s almost unbelievable career at the heart of soul/rhythm and blues over the past 50 years. I have a pretty good idea what he’ll be doing at the
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July 29, 2012 — Steven Hayward
More from the “What Would We Do Without Social Scientists” file, a new study out of Britain that finds professional women benefit from flirting. I’m still waiting for social psychologists to replicate the finding from a few years back that women in bars get better looking the more you drink. (A real study, as I recall, but I can’t find it. All I can find right now is the study
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