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More on polls. This time from John Nolte at Breitbart.
If you’re going to believe the polls released from CBS/New York Times this morning — you know, the polls the media’s currently using to beat Romney senseless and to depress Republican enthusiasm, you have to believe that the turnout advantage for Democrats over Republicans will blow away every previous record and common sense.
It’s that simple. Because these polls are not only telling us that Romney is losing OH, PA, and FL by insurmountable margins; these polls are also telling us that Democrat turnout is projected to blow away every modern record.
But these media polls don’t headline what they’re seeing as far as the Democrat turnout advantage because no one would believe it. In fact, no one believes Obama will match the D+7 nationwide advantage he enjoyed in 2008. And no one certainly believes he will surpass it.
Oh, except this non-stop litany of media polls being wielded like weapons by the corrupt media.
Here are the CBS/New York Times internals. And here’s the con the CBS/NYTs is attempting to pull: …
Jennifer Rubin examines the president’s UN speech.
President Obama is so soaked in the State Department/Western European/ leftist intellectual goo of moral relativism and disdain for core American values that I doubt he understood how offensive were his remarks at the United Nations today.
After fessing up that our embassy people were killed by terrorists (he doesn’t say what kind, however) and reciting that violence is never justified he then once again denounced the anti-Islam video. And he delivers this:
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.
Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims and Shia pilgrims. It’s time to heed the words of Gandhi, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.”
Together, we must work towards a work where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies. That’s the vision we will support.”
Where to begin?
Let’s start with the simple observation that he is the president and not the minister of religion. It is not necessary for him to select out one or another references to the Divine. (No “God of Moses”?). It sounds like blatant pandering and it is.
The fact that he embodies the U.N. mantra on defamation of religion (“slander”) is even more regrettable. This is, as informed watchers of the U.N. know, an invidious movement to control and suppress speech, to prevent criticism of Islamic extremists and to use the West’s legal system against itself.
Moreover, Obama is heading down a path to nowhere in which every statement of intolerance theoretically must be individually condemned by our government. But he doesn’t mean it. The hypocrisy is evident. He doesn’t and will never do this when Evangelical Christians are vilified, when art displays portray Jesus in offensive ways or when Broadway musicals jab at Mormons. …
Jonah Goldberg asks what Obama has learned.
The Oval Office isn’t the place to learn on the job. That was the line from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain in 2008. In fairness, that’s always the argument the more experienced candidate uses against the less experienced candidate (just ask Mitt Romney).
But Barack Obama seemed a special case, easily among the least experienced major-party nominees in U.S. history. A Pew poll in August 2008, found that the biggest concern voters had with Obama fell under the category of “personal abilities and experience.” In a “change” year, Americans swallowed those concerns and voted for the change candidate.
Four years later, it’s worth asking, “What has Obama learned?”
Several journalists have asked that exact question. And Obama’s answers raise another question: Can Obama learn?
In July, CBS News’s Charlie Rose asked Obama what the biggest mistake of his first term was. Obama replied it “was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right.”
Getting the policy right is important, Obama continued, “but the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.” …
… His claim that he was too busy “getting the policy right” to tell the people a story is doubly creepy in its lack of self-awareness. All the reporting about Obama’s first term suggests that he outsourced the heavy lifting on the stimulus, “Obamacare,” and Wall Street reform to the Democratic leadership while he indulged his logorrheic platitudinousness. According to Bob Woodward’s new book, even Nancy Pelosi hit mute on the speakerphone (which she’s denied) during one of Obama’s perorations, and she and Harry Reid went on with their meeting.
In his first year, Obama barely stopped talking to the American people, who unfortunately didn’t always have a mute button handy. According to CBS’s Mark Knoller, Obama gave 411 speeches or statements (52 addresses solely on health-care reform), 42 news conferences, 158 interviews, 23 town-hall meetings, and 28 fundraisers.
And what did Obama learn from all of this? Nothing, nothing at all.
Andrew Malcolm cuts to the chase.
It’s probably safe to surmise that if, as he did, Barack Obama bothered to set up a formal teleprompter in the manure-sprinkled dirt of a rodeo arena for remarks to a captive crowd back in 2008, he doesn’t care much what people think.
To be sure, he and his sleeveless wife have followed that pattern consistently during their 1,344 days of White House residency with her mother. He launched a war against Libya without congressional approval, while he took his extended family around South America. Nine days later he consented to explain his military actions.
Obama took two months to talk to the country about its worst environmental disaster, the Gulf oil spill.
The Obamas entertained Hollywood celebrities at lavish White House parties while millions of Americans lost jobs, homes and hope during recovery-less Recovery Summers. While her husband urged Americans to vacation on the recovering GulfCoast, Michelle Obama flew off to a luxury resort in Spain with numerous friends.
Like many in the 1%, Obama plays golf, 104 presidential rounds to be exact. But only Obama was Commander-in-Chief, presiding at one point over the conduct of three wars — and the awful sacrifices by others involved in armed conflicts, while Obama lined up challenging putts.
But with a national election just six weeks from today, a voter verdict he so clearly is desperate to win, this guy has carried an oblivious insouciance to unparalleled heights — or depths.
Several weeks ago as a few dozen Virginians began to collapse in the afternoon heat during an unusually long Obama lecture, the president noted paramedics were on the way. But instead of wrapping up, he offered the audience advice on how to stand while he finished.
An American ambassador is killed on duty in Libya on 9/11, the first in three decades, along with three countrymen. Obama reads a tribute to their sacrifice and heads to Vegas for fundraising. …
London’s Telegraph sends a reporter to a town in Ohio to find voters who like Obama. Slim pickings.
There is a narrative in Washington that goes like this: swing voters basically like Barack Obama. They like his level temperament and they like his modern charm. They like pictures of him and his young family and their rambunctious dog, Bo. They like that he can sing, that he can shoot a three-pointer on the basketball court and can deliver a joke on late night.
The narrative is so strong that even Mitt Romney appears to buy into it. During his covertly-filmed remarks to donors at a Florida fundraiser, he warned that all-out assaults on the President’s character could backfire and that voters don’t want to be told Obama is a failure. “They like him,” the Republican conceded.
But as Dunkirk’s residents gathered for a communal meal of chicken noodles and mashed potato on Tuesday night there was little evidence of the latent affection that Washington has diagnosed.
In some cases the hostility took a predictable form. Ray Petty, a kind-hearted handyman with an eager smile, said he had always voted Democrat and was a big fan of both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. But he lit up with delight as he explained that Obama was a Muslim born outside the United States. “We’ve got to watch out for the Islamic birthrate,” he says, still smiling.
Another man quietly noted that Obama had won Ohio in 2008 even though “I’ve never met anyone who voted for him”. He trails off, leaving the conservative spectre of voter fraud hanging over the meal.
But even away from those whose dislike for Obama is anchored in conspiracy and ignorance, it is still hard difficult to find anyone with kind words to say about the President. …
John Hinderaker at Power Line follows up on Elizabeth Warren’s missing law license.
Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign is, I think, going rapidly down the drain. On top of her affirmative action fiasco comes another scandal: it appears that she has been practicing law in Massachusetts without a license for some years.
Credit William Jacobson, who, like Warren, is a law professor, for the discovery. Jacobson has been one of the most effective members of the blogosphere over the last couple of years, and this story is a tribute to his dogged investigation. His initial post is here. Jacobson establishes that Warren is not licensed in Massachusetts, and never has been; that she is not currently licensed to practice law anywhere; that Warren repeatedly listed her Cambridge, Massachusetts office as her law office in court filings; and that Warren in fact practiced law out of her Cambridge office. If all of that is true, as seems incontestable, Warren has a lot of explaining to do.
It is important to note that Warren has done a considerable amount of legal work in recent years, and has been well paid for it. She was paid a fee by Travelers Insurance Company, to cite just one example, that was in the low six figures. So we are not talking about a casual, borderline situation. Warren indisputably is practicing law, and by her own repeated assertion, she is doing so in Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Rules of Professional Responsibility treat this subject as the rules do in most states. Rule 5.5 addresses the unauthorized practice of law. Rule 5.5 (b) sets out the basic prohibition on practicing law in Massachusetts without a Massachusetts license:
(b) A lawyer who is not admitted to practice in this jurisdiction shall not:
(1) except as authorized by these Rules or other law, establish an office or other systematic and continuous presence in this jurisdiction for the practice of law; or
(2) hold out to the public or otherwise represent that the lawyer is admitted to practice law in this jurisdiction.
Emphasis added. On the undisputed facts, it appears that Warren has violated this prohibition. She admittedly is not licensed in Massachusetts, and yet she has established a law office in Massachusetts–one which she has referenced on any number of appellate briefs, and in which she has earned a large amount of money. Absent an exception, she is guilty as charged. …