Monthly Archives: October 2014
October 29, 2014 — Steven Hayward
With the final week sprint to the election next week, a brief time out for some music. Anyone remember when MTV used to broadcast music videos? Of course, musicians need to make music videos for anyone to have anything to broadcast, so no wonder MTV now stands for “Mostly Trashy Viewing.” About the only musicians still putting out videos with real effort is the circus act known as OK Go.
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October 29, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Even the New York Times is starting to figure out that Obama and his roving clownshow of an administration is simply in over its head. In “Mounting Crises Raise Questions on Obama Team’s Ability to Cope,” Times reporter Mark Landler uses ventriloquist journalism to give effect to the no doubt widespread desire of Beltway Democrats for Obama to try to right his fortunes through the desperation measure of cleaning house
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October 29, 2014 — John Hinderaker
We have written here and here about the “senior Obama administration official” who called Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit” in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. This is the full context: The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official
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October 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
The twisted mentality of the Obama administration is prominently on display in Jeffrey Goldberg’s summary of his conversations with senior officials posted here. Anonymously describing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as “chickenshit,” one senior official serves up a pure case of projection, and another senior administration official seconds him (or her). It is as if Obama himself had dismissed someone as “arrogant,” or Joe Biden disparaged anyone as “stupid,” or John
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October 29, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Democrats are convinced that Hillary Clinton is a powerhouse presidential candidate, notwithstanding the fact that the only elections she has ever actually won were for the Senate; she ran in New York, a state in which she did not live, while she was First Lady. Which is, essentially, cheating. She was then reelected. After that, she lost the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination despite being universally considered the inevitable nominee. Is
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October 29, 2014 — Steven Hayward
The climatistas are already wetting their pants with the news that 2014 is supposedly on track to be the warmest year evah! The AP’s environmental “reporter” Seth Borenstein (who is really just an environmental activist with a byline, like most environmental “reporters”*) has told us so. Not so fast, says Dr. Roy Spencer, who is, as you may recall, one of the inventors of the NASA satellite systems that give
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October 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
The House Oversight Committee has released the video below providing a short refresher in the IRS targeting scandal. One of the Obama administration’s greatest successes is the stonewalling, covering up and bald-faced prevaricating with which it has kept the lid on the scandal. The video isn’t really comprehensible unless you’ve been following the story, so it is of limited usefulness. But it is good enough to have set me back
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October 29, 2014 — John Hinderaker
We wrote last night that the story Scott–and no one else–has been reporting for the last week has been confirmed. The computers in the Executive Office of the President have been down for two weeks because they were hacked by a foreign power–the Obama administration now says Russia–and administration technical personnel are having trouble bringing them back on line. This is a huge story, obviously, and it is inconceivable that
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October 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
In the newly posted installment of Conversations with Bill Kristol, we meet up with the formidable public intellectual Christopher DeMuth (complete video below, broken into six chapters here, transcript here). As president of the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2008, DeMuth built AEI into a powerhouse. He currently serves as a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. In this conversation, Kristol and DeMuth discuss political thinkers including Edward C.
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October 28, 2014 — John Hinderaker
In case you missed it, the Obama administration (a “senior administration official”) has gone on record calling Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit.” Somehow, that seems like a poor–not to mention vulgar–turn of phrase. The Netanyahu family is not known for its “chickenshit” qualities. Let’s just say that in his youth, Benjamin did not belong to a “Choom Gang.” Mark Hemingway responds on Twitter: Sure, that chickenshit PM was IDF special forces,
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October 28, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Last week, we got information from a source in the Executive Office of the President that the EOP’s computer system had been down for, at that time, a week. Federal IT personnel evidently were having trouble identifying and fixing the problem that had brought the computer system down (although email and internet access had been restored), and EOP employees were instructed to say nothing about it. Scott followed up with
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October 28, 2014 — Scott Johnson
We have been reporting since this past Thursday that the Executive Office of the President has been hit by computer network issues suggestive of hacking, though we have yet to receive a response to any of the several inquiries we submitted to the White House press office. The White House has now chosen to leak the story to Reuters tonight: Suspicious cyber activity has been detected on the computer network
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October 28, 2014 — Steven Hayward
American Studies is intended to be a cross-discipline combining literature, history, political science, and one or two other fields (anthropology and philosophy perhaps), and that’s what it did when I emphasized the field through the History and Government departments at Claremont more than 30 years ago. It was a wonderful way of having truly interdisciplinary discussion on key issues past and present. But today, like so many other areas in
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October 28, 2014 — John Hinderaker
With one week to go before the election, public sentiment seems to be breaking in the Republicans’ favor. Time will tell: projections depend on turnout models, and the Democrats are making hysterical efforts to turn out their base, as well as counting on voter fraud in key states. But will 2014 be just a satisfactory year for the GOP, or will there be a wave that includes unexpected victories? I
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October 28, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Republican gains next week look to be substantial, and if my hunch is correct the GOP will exceed expectations and probably sneak up on at least one Senate race currently thought out of reach, like New Mexico or Michigan. And they’ll probably nab a few House seats that Democrats think are safe. Then the question will turn to recriminations on the left. The Koch brothers will come in for the
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October 28, 2014 — Scott Johnson
We have conveyed the report of a reader we believe to be a knowledgeable source regarding a serious problem affecting the computer network serving the Executive Office of the President. We have called and written the White House press office seeking a response to the report since this past Thursday morning. The White House has failed to respond. In his most recent message, our source reports: EOP employees told to
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October 28, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Sharyl Attkisson has been working on her memoir recounting her ordeal at CBS News roughly since she left the network earlier this year. The fact that her she had a book coming out and the contours of her critique of CBS News are no surprise. She has publicly discussed them for months. The book is scheduled for publication on November 4, but the New York Post has obtained a copy
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