Clipping blog

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• Clearing the Browser Tabs – Turning Straw into Gold (Standard) Sunday Edition
• Clearing the Browser Tabs – A Cornucopia of All Good Stuff Saturday Edition
• Perry, Palin, and the Post-Leadership President

Clearing the Browser Tabs – Turning Straw into Gold (Standard) Sunday Edition Posted: 14 Aug 2011 03:10 AM PDT Yesterday, the good people of Iowa cast the first (sort of) votes in the 2012 Presidential campaign. If you’ve never heard of the Ames Straw Poll, you can brush up on it thanks to the wonder of Wikipedia. It should be sufficient to know that the whole events exists, so far as I can tell, for two purposes: 1) To give the MSM cover for the campaign narrative it started to build the day candidates began to officially enter the race, and 2) so Iowa can get some attention from at least one political party that it wouldn’t get without the poll. How did it turn out? Well, about like you’d imagine. Michele Bachmann, who pretty much lives next door, won the day and will use today’s results to build some momentum for the actual primaries. She was followed closely by Ron Paul, whose love for the gold standard and hatred of orbital mind control satellites operated from underground bunkers run by the Gnomes of Zurich has earned him a group of followers so earnest they’d dress up as penguins to vote in the Ross Ice Shelf Straw Poll, finished a close second. Tim Pawlenty came in third and everyone else more or less followed after. There were a couple surprises. Rick Santorum, whose campaign could not have operated with any more anonymity had he shown up in Ames with a paper bag on his head finished a respectable fourth. Michael Barone thinks that’s a loss for the former Senator given how much energy he put into the state over the past month, and I tend to agree. I’m disappointed with Herman Cain’s fifth place finish, just a percentage point behind Santorum. He is clearly the best public speaker of the entire bunch of candidates, Sarah Palin included, and he draws large and enthusiastic crowds. He hasn’t managed to convince anyone, though, that he’s “electable” and I believe that hurts him when it comes time to vote. If we had a system where people could vote for first and second choices, I don’t doubt that Cain would garner enough second-choice votes to win out, but that’s simply not enough. If he’s going to hang around long enough to make a splash, he needs to take a different tack, and soon. As for Palin, well, she didn’t do so well as a write-in candidate. As I’ve often said, it’d help immensely if she could give the voting public a clue about her intentions. But she hasn’t to this point and I don’t imagine she’ll start tomorrow. And now, links. Ann Althouse decided to film an anti-Scott Walker rally and it didn’t go well. She was not only assaulted by a left-wing Walker-hater but also endured a very misguided and inappropriate lecture from a police officer who also threatened her son with possible arrest. William Jacobsen noted that when the left packed Madison a couple of months ago, the police were very conspicuously absent as well. I guess public sector union members of a feather flock together. I’m not at all surprised that the Eric Holder-led Department of Justice, which is up to its ears in trouble with the still-unfolding Operation Fast and Furious scandal, won’t give the family of a murdered officer the status they are due. Pity poor President Obama. He’s the most reviled political figure since Martin Luther King. I know…it’s enough to make you cry, or maybe bang your head on your desk a few times until the narcissistic arrogance falls out of your head. In a more sane world, some grown adult would walk up to Barack Obama’s buddy Van Jones and punch him square in the mouth for the way he’s exploited children to push his progressive political agenda. Let me get this straight. The MSM managed to unearth Rick Perry’s college transcripts days before he even announced his candidacy, but they still haven’t managed to find Barack Obama’s? That’s not journalism, folks. That’s straight-up partisan hackery. Thank goodness that citizen journalists still exist to do the real work that we need reporters to do. Chris Muir, whose comic today contains every small business owner’s lament, has one week left in his yearly fundraising drive and he’s very nearly to his goal. It would be very nice if you could not only put him over the top, but give him a little extra pad besides. He’s an immensely-talented artist and as hard a worker as you’ll find anywhere in the artistic community.

Clearing the Browser Tabs – A Cornucopia of All Good Stuff Saturday Edition Posted: 13 Aug 2011 12:35 PM PDT For the first time in a while, I’m not going to “theme” the Clearing the Browser Tabs Post. I feel a little bit scattered today, and the things that have caught my attention in my RSS feed haven’t been about any one thing in particular. But that really is the purpose of a good link dump, isn’t it — to share a lot of interesting things that, for one reason or another, don’t work together for a proper blog post? So here we go. And now, links. Zilla has another inspirational post about the need to hit as many tip jars as possible. She also linked very generously to one of my posts, which as you know, is an excellent way to get my attention for future links! But link or no, Zilla’s post deserves more attention. As a great man once said about the right wing blogosphere, we must hang together or we shall all surely hang separately. Or something. I think we’ll be seeing a long more of these: a “Dear John” letter to the state of California from a small business owner. Ed Driscoll has the line of the week: “It's a vicious cycle isn't it? As the Obama economy circles the drain, thieves steal the drain.” ACORN suffered another serious blow this week. I really want to see a lot more of this. The group has made a living out of bending, and in many cases breaking, our laws in an effort to destroy our democratic system of government. They need to pay. Somehow, I’m sure the private sector could create jobs that cost just a little bit less than $2 million apiece. Sarah Rumpf is wicked-smart and knows how to work the Twitter machine. Jonathan Last wrote a great piece in The Weekly Standard about the considerable problem of Chinese knock-off products and how our desire for cheaply-made products makes that problem almost impossible to eradicate. One of the best things about the end of the “dog days” is the prominence of some of the most beautiful constellations in the night sky. How about a few great deep-sky nebula pictures for all your computer and iPad wallpaper needs?

Perry, Palin, and the Post-Leadership President Posted: 13 Aug 2011 12:10 PM PDT It’s official; Texas Governor Rick Perry is in the 2012 Presidential race. He made his announcement today at the Red State Gathering in South Carolina with a rousing speech that was equal part indictment of the poor performance of our current President and unabashed optimism about what America can do in the future. Today, on Twitter, I remarked that Perry sounded as if he’d been listening to The Delivery the past few weeks. Those of you who listen regularly (and you do listen regularly, don’t you?), know that I’ve practically begged for a Republican candidate to take up the message of unabashed optimism in and love for America and the people who make her great every day. Philip Klein had some thoughts about Perry’s announcement, you can watch the speech for yourself thanks to The Right Scoop, and you can read the Obama campaign’s buzzword-laden response here. Meanwhile, the other Republican candidates have gathered in Iowa for the Ames Straw Poll — the first “primary” of the season. Stacy McCain is there today and will have the most up-to-date information about the poll and its eventual results. I expect we’ll see at least two candidates whose campaigns were at least viable fall out of any serious contention — probably Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty, though that’s only an educated guess, so don’t hold me to it. Sarah Palin is in Iowa as well for reasons that, as best I can tell, only she knows. Maybe she’ll run for President; maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll back one of the Iowa candidates; maybe she won’t. That really is the problem with Sarah Palin as a political leader. She gives her followers no clear idea what her destination is. That doesn’t seem to bother most of them, but if she wants to be a serious player in conservative politics, she’s going to have to pick a couple goals and head toward them in more or less a straight line. President Obama is also headed to Iowa and I don’t find it coincidental that he announced his trip just a day or so after Sarah Palin arrived in the state. I suppose this is more of the “leading from behind” for which he’s become famous. Of course, the White House says the trip is not even a little bit political — just a happy little jaunt to the heartland to explain why none of the crushing economic failure of the Obama administration is actually the fault of the Obama administration. Oh, sure, the Republicans just spent two weeks politicking across the state, but that has nothing to do with the President’s trip. Nosirree!

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