PrairiePundit

Laura Rubenfeld: Democrats Embrace Siraj Wahhaj: Supporter of Cop-Killer, Al Qaeda and Hamas, Part II Democrats are quick to call Republicans extremist for wanting to cut the deficit, but don't see al Qaeda and Hamas supporting Muslims as extremist?   That tells you something about their perspective.  It is why it is a mistake to assume they are part of the mainstream of thought in this country.

Erick Erickson: We should not forget that John Harris of the Politico, who asked the stupidest and most irrelevant questions of any moderator during the GOP Primary debates, is married to the former head of NARAL in Virginia. We should not forget that Jonathan Allen of the Politico once worked for Debbie Wasserman Schultz. We should not forget that Andy Barr of the Politico left the Politico to go work for the Democratic National Committee. We should not forget any of this because I do not believe it is any accident that today the Politico has a big story from John Harris about race in the 2012 election. The welfare attacks came up suddenly from the Romney campaign, which said little about the issue when Obama’s administration changed policy to let states seek waivers on the work requirements. The Romney welfare ads, which have been on heavily in battleground states, prominently feature Bill Clinton signing the welfare reform bill into law. The first ad in the series said that O...

Ann Coulter: Poor Mickey Kaus. He’s the liberal intellectual (not an oxymoron — he’s the last known living “liberal intellectual”) lefties on TV are usually stealing from, but now that this welfare reform maven has concluded that Romney’s welfare ad is basically correct, liberals refuse to acknowledge his existence. The non-Fox media have formed a solid front in denouncing Romney’s welfare ad for daring to point out that Obama has gutted the work requirements of the 1996 welfare reform bill. The New York Times claims that Romney’s ad “falsely” charges Obama with eliminating work requirements. CNN rates the ad “false.” Underemployed hack Howard Fineman says Romney’s ad “is just flat out wrong on the facts” and “that every fair analyst, every fact checker” has said it’s “just factually wrong.” When a campaign ad induces this much hysteria, you know Romney has struck gold. On closer examination, it turns out that by “every fair analyst,” Fineman means a bunch of liberals quoting one ano...

It is a very effective argument that should resonate with young and older people.  Both the parents and the young voters want those stuck in their childhood bedrooms to move on with a productive life. It was one of the best lines of the night.

At MSNBC the hostility to Republicans is so thick, that the GOP could probably get fairer treatment if they just invited the DNC instead of these people.  The NY Times Editorial Board has been apoplectic, and the same goes for many of the so called fact checkers/nit pickers.  The arguments made by the GOP must really be stinging. I have not heard anything I view as unfair coming from the speaking podium, but the questions being asked at MSNBC are just ridiculous.  These same people are ignoring the fraudulent arguments coming from President Obama and his campaign.  By so blatantly choosing sides they have lost any semblance of credibility.  The management should be embarrassed.

Telegraph: Scores of soldiers and their wives are risking Army anger by stripping off and saluting to show support for Prince Harry, and posting the pictures on Facebook. As our troops get naked to copy Army comrade Prince Harry's nude Vegas party pose, their wives and girlfriends are getting in on the act too. They are borrowing their boys' uniforms and performing 'naked salutes' either totally nude or in varying states of undress. They are among over 13,000 who have joined a military Facebook group called 'Support Prince Harry With A Naked Salute'. Several declared themselves terrified about baring themselves in public - but determined to send their message of support for Harry. ... There are several photos at the link above.  I think the reaction to the exposure is over blown.  There should be larger concerns with the British military which is being stripped of its fighting assets because the country is spending too much on social programs a...

CBS talks to the second guy in the room when bin Laden was killed.

Owen West and Bing West: ... The indignation about "No Easy Day" was stirred because the author violated the supposed SEAL code of secrecy. Mr. Bissonnette will have to straighten out his personal relationship with his former comrades, many of whom are no doubt disappointed by his project. But that code of silence has not prevented a flood of SEAL books over the past two decades. The dozen best-selling SEAL-written books on Amazon.com, including "Lone Survivor" and "American Sniper," along with the film "Act of Valor," may have given our enemies a detailed understanding of SEAL procedures, but also a healthy respect for their skills.  Mr. Bissonnette's critics in the armed forces and media would do well to distinguish between one warrior who was on the front lines, writing about what he experienced, and the leaks about military matters that have been coming from the top of our government. The written law and the moral burden of protect...

Gallup: In the lead-up to this year's presidential convention period, 44% of registered voters held a favorable view of the Republican Party and 43% of the Democratic Party. While the Republicans' favorable rating is similar to where it stood before the conventions kicked off in 2008, the Democrats' is 11 percentage points lower. It is also the lowest pre-conventions favorable score the Democrats have received among voters in Gallup records dating to 1992. ...  This is bad news for Democrats across the boards.   The Republicans already have an enthusiasm edge and it appears there will be many voters who will come out just to vote against Democrats.  Who can blame them.

Houston Chronicle: After more than a dozen attempts, Mexico’s national petroleum monopoly has struck significant oil very near the U.S. boundary in the ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday. “This is a great discovery,” Calderon said in announcing the find by Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, beneath more than 8,300 feet of water and miles of earth, the first successful well in a system that he said ultimately may hold as much as 10 billion barrels of oil. “It will further strengthen our petroleum reserves and will permit Mexico to maintain and increase petroleum production in the medium and long term.” Pemex has been scrambling in recent years to replace the sharp production declines in the Cantarell offshore field at the foot of the Gulf. Earlier deep water attempts have either produced dry wells or natural gas that’s uneconomical to exploit at current prices. Pemex estimates that its Gulf reserves may hold as much as 27 billion barrels of p...

NBC News: A Florida appeals court on Wednesday granted George Zimmerman's request for a new judge.  Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, had said the judge presiding over his case has made disparaging remarks about him. The Fifth District Court of Appeal wrote in a decision that Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. should "enter an order of disqualification which requests the chief circuit judge to appoint a successor judge."  The opinion said: "Although many of the allegations in Zimmerman's motion, standing alone, do not meet the legal sufficiency test, and while this is admittedly a close call, upon careful review we find that the allegations, taken together, meet the threshold test of legal sufficiency."  The appeals court ruling was 2 to 1 in favor. ... The judge did seem hostile to Zimmerman's case.  Whether he will get a judge who is more even handed is still to be determined....

McClatchy: In late 1999, two years before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, a group of Afghan agents loyal to an anti-Taliban guerrilla leader proposed assassinating Osama bin Laden. All they wanted was the $5 million reward the Clinton administration had offered for bin Laden’s capture, says a former Polish spy who was the Afghans’ go-between on the plot. The CIA rejected the plan, however, saying, "We do not have a license to kill." The story, the centerpiece of “Ferreting out bin Laden,” a book by former spy Alexander Makowski that was published in Poland in June but isn’t yet available in English, offers previously unknown details about how the United States missed warning signs of the deadliest foreign attack ever on U.S. soil. It’s told from the perspective of an allied intelligence service whose specialty is human intelligence – recruiting and running agents – not the technological monitoring that’s considered the U.S.’s strength. “They ...

Obama probably does not have an answer to her questioning of his policies, because those policies are really indefensible.

Mickey Kaus: “Our most effective ad is our welfare ad”– Romney ad strategist : 1)  Told  you  so ; 2)  It was clear at an  Atlantic/National Journal  forum in Tampa this morning that the MSM is very proud of itself for abandoning traditional  “false balance”  and declaring in its own voice that Romney’s ads are wrong. A  front page news (not opinion) article in the  New York Times  simply asserts: The Romney campaign is airing an advertisement falsely charging that Mr. Obama has “quietly announced” plans to eliminate work and job training requirements for welfare beneficiaries … The only trouble with this inspiring reclamation of journalistic manhood is that … Mr. Obama  did quietly announce what certainly seemed like plans to eliminate work and job training requirements for many welfare beneficiaries .  Bring back false balance. 3)   Romney’s ads are overstated and oversimplified– some of them say O...

Gov. Rick Perry: The most enthusiasm about this election is not coming from labor unions, paid volunteers or even traditional political party organizations. It’s coming from the Tea Party . This grass-roots movement is made up of people from across the country who are sick and tired — some might say “ fed up” — of seeing Washington fail, time and time again, to address the very real problems facing our nation. This movement is drawing its energy from the very principles upon which our nation was founded: economic liberty, limited government and freedom. These principles, which do not seem to be shared by President Obama, must be restored to our national vocabulary if we are to restore America. Don’t think they’re going to play a major role in this election? You haven’t been paying attention. Tea Party candidates across the country have scored upset victories, including Ted Yoho in Florida, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, and, in my home state, Ted Cruz . All ran strong, well-organiz...

Chris Cillizza: ... * Ann Romney: Unlike almost everyone who spoke on Tuesday night, Ann Romney isn’t — and never has been — a politician. That makes her performance that much more impressive. Was she nervous at times? Yup. (Her nervous laugh was a bit jarring.) But, overall Ann Romney did exactly what her husband and his campaign needed her to: she told the story of a Mitt Romney that almost no one in the country knows. She talked about how they met at a high school dance, how he made her laugh, how they ate tuna fish when they were a young married couple. Her best line? “Mitt doesn’t like to talk about how he’s helped others,” she said. “Because he sees it as a privilege not a political talking point.” Cue huge applause.  * Nikki Haley: Of all the men and women touted as rising stars within the GOP who took the stage on Tuesday, the governor of South Carolina was the best. She was poised and relaxed and drew the crowd to their feet with her mentions of the Palmetto Stat...

NY Times: Sean Lennon: Destroying Precious Land for Gas   Natural gas has been sold as clean energy, but the word “clean” is taking on a disturbingly Orwellian tone. It is a pernicious falsehood to claim  that drilling for gas destroys land.  I have seen thousands of oil and gas wells in several states.  It is just ridiculous to claim that gas wells "destroy precious land" or even unprecious land.  There are wells within a few miles of my house. The foot print of the completed well is relatively small and taxes up less room than a grain silo.  The benefit to the land owner is greater than the inconvenience of having a drilling rig around for a few weeks and the benefit of the gas from the well is greater than a windmill or a solar field both of which consume more land and offer less energy. As for the clean energy argument, it should be indisputable that natural gas is cleaner than burning coal ...

Frank Crimi: As Iranian lawmakers now seek to lower the legal age of marriage for girls to nine-years-old, the number of Iranian brides already under 10 years of age is sharply rising. The Iranian decision to allow nine-year-old girls the legal opportunity to be married to fully grown men was announced by Mohammad Ali Isfenani, chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee. Isfenani called Iran’s current civil legislation, which sets the minimum legal age of marriage for girls at 13-years-old, “un-Islamic and illegal,” saying, “We must regard nine as being the appropriate age for a girl to have reached puberty and qualified to get married. To do otherwise would be to contradict and challenge Islamic Sharia law.” Isenfani’s clarion call for prepubescent marriage comes at the same moment a new report from the Union for the Protection of Children’s Rights (UPCR) found 75 Iranian girls less than 10-years-old were forced to marry in the past two months, part of a sharp ri...

Red States has more on the SEIU operations, including: ... Take, for example, the story of the Connecticut nursing home patients who were recently put in harm’s way when the SEIU abandoned them for picket lines. Were it not for the internet (and a long memory), finding the story about the SEIU’s 2001 nursing home strike where “equipment and sterile medical supplies had been tampered with, patient identification bracelets were removed, drugs were missing and a door to a supply room containing oxygen had been glued shut” would have laborious, if not impossible. ...

Phillip Klein:  ... Davis said: But in all seriousness, do you know why so many of us believed? We led with our hearts and our dreams that we could be more inclusive than America had ever been, and no candidate had ever spoken so beautifully.  But dreams meet daybreak: the jobless know what I mean, so do the families who wonder how this Administration could wreck a recovery for three years and counting.  So many of those high-flown words have faded.  Remember the President saying of negative politics and untrue ads, “not this time?”  Who knew “not this time” just meant “not unless the economy is still stuck and we can’t run on our record?”  Remember, too, when he said, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal?”  Who knew the plain English version of it was, “middle America, get ready to shell out 60 bucks to fill up your car?”  And in terms of their crown jewel le...