Apparently, the Obama reelection campaign is afraid the president might say or do something regrettable. More than 60 VIP donors who attended a fundraiser at the home Blackstone CEO Hamilton James on Monday night were told they had to place their phones in a plastic bag before being allowed admittance, ABC News reports. While one campaign aide called the move “standard operating procedure,” Zeke Miller of Buzzfeed reports that several campaign veterans (including aides to Hillary Clinton, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman) have never “heard of the practice, which is common in secure White House spaces where there are concerns of espionage, but unknown in contexts in which only political secrets are discussed.” And despite the fact that each donor paid $35,800 to attend the ultra-swanky event, it still wasn’t enough to win the trust of the president’s campaign aides. Apparently, they’re terrified enough that the president will make an offhand, awkward remark (the type that people bitterly cling to ) that they’re willing to confiscate the phones from some of his most powerful supporters. “The potential for awkward moments was particularly high last night, as Obama spent the morning calling for more Wall Street regulation [and then] released an ad calling Mitt Romney’s private equity firm a ‘vampire ,’” Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic Wire writes. “[He] then entertained Wall Street guests at the home of the man who runs one of the most successful private equity firm in the business. Now we’ll never know just how awkward it got,” Bennett adds. Oh. That is a little awkward. But why wouldn’t the president want everyone to hear the great things he has to say members of the “1 percent”? “Why wouldn’t the Obama campaign want everybody far and wide to know what he’s telling those rich people attending his high-dollar fundraisers?” conservative blogger Doug Powers asks. “You’d think Obama would welcome the use of cell phones as he lectures the greedy one-percenters about how they should be sharing the wealth, demanding a tax increase and stop being eco-hypocrites by getting rid of their planet-destroying private jets in favor of algae-powered go-karts so the video could hit the web just as fast as possible,” he adds. But seriously, the decision to have phones confiscated from high roller donors has more than a few people scratching their heads. “What is he hiding? Candidates should be for and against the same issue in private as they are in public,” said former Perry campaign manager Rob Johnson, according to Buzzfeed. “This shows just how uncomfortable the Obama team is with their message an their candidate. And in addition to religion and guns, voters like to cling to their cell phones,” Johnson adds. The rest is here: VIP Donors Phones Confiscated at Obama Fundraising Event
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VIP Donors Phones Confiscated at Obama Fundraising Event
Today is May 14th. On this date in 1643, Louis XIV became King of France at only four years old. At the coronation, he famously declared “Let me eat cake!” On this date in 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition got underway, departing from St. Louis, Missouri. Lewis and Clark made a great team for many years, until eventually they had a falling out when Lewis teamed up with Dean Martin to do stand-up comedy and movies, which Clark thought “diluted the brand.” Also on this date, in 1998, the final episode of Seinfeld aired on NBC. What ‘s the deal with that ? Today is also George Lucas’ birthday. Activities include: creating something awesome, letting people grow to love it, and then setting it on fire and throwing it off a cliff. And finally, today is National Chicken Dance Day ! Dance while you can; the Center for the Advancement of Chicken Americans has decried the holiday as offensive and is looking to have it banned. Foghorn Leghorn could not be reached for comment, and was delicious. Consider this an Open Thread . TARGET: ALEC | Free Beacon “Leading progressive organizers met on May 10 to coordinate their attack plan against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), discussing ways to pressure corporations into abandoning the group for its small-government advocacy and turn against what they call the ‘vast, right-wing conspiracy.’” Protesters rush into building housing Obama campaign headquarters | WGN “Dozens of demonstrators dashed into the Loop building housing President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters this morning, slipping past security guards and running up escalators as they kicked off what they called a ‘Week Without Capitalism.’” DNC Turning Down Wisconsin Democrats’ Requests? | Jim Geraghty “Interesting: The DNC is refusing to kick in $500,000 to help Wisconsin Democrats unseat Scott Walker.” Pro-subsidy does not equal pro-business | John Sununu “The important question, though, is whether the policy is economically efficient and fair. Sometimes even great-sounding programs are a poor use of taxpayer funds, but no politician likes to say no.” Jonah Goldberg: The political ‘center’ is a myth [VIDEO] | Daily Caller “The political ‘center’ pined after by many journalists, pundits and lawmakers doesn’t exist, National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg said in an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas.” Today’s Member Diary of the Day is: Rick Perry endorses Pete Hegseth(SEN PRI, MN) , from Hooah_Mac . Today’s Word of the Day comes via Dictionary.com. toxophilite (tok-sof-uh-lahyt): noun a devotee of archery; archer.
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Daily Links – May 14, 2012
You have to love the era of YouTube. Nothing gets past us these days because it’s all on tape! Although somehow people are still questioning what someone said even when it is on tape . Either way, it makes for great moments in campaign years. Take for instance this little diddy that took place on the Romney trail. For the video impaired, a woman had some not too kind words to say about President Obama. Via Huffpo : “We have a president right now that is operating outside the structure of our Constitution,” the audience member said to applause. “And I want to know — yeah, I do agree he should be tried for treason — but I want to know what you would be able to do to restore balance between the three branches of government and what you are going to be able to do to restore our Constitution in this country.”Romney didn’t correct the woman, choosing instead to address the question she posed. “Well, as I’m sure you do, I happen to believe the Constitution was not just brilliant but probably inspired. I happen to believe the same thing about the Declaration of Independence,” said Romney. “I would respect the different branches of government if I am fortunate enough to become president.” Apparently the White House is very upset that Romney didn’t immediately punch this woman in the face and arrest her for sedition. “We saw what a weak leader Romney was in the whole [Richard] Grenell mess,” DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse said, in reference to the openly gay foreign policy spokesman who left the Romney campaign last week. “Not surprised he didn’t push back on the treason remark.” Choice words from the party of Joe Biden, a man who was just smacked down for offering his own opinion on gay marriage that stood in stark contrast to the view of the President. But Obama’s people weren’t done yet. “Time after time in this campaign, Mitt Romney has had the opportunity to show that he has the fortitude to stand up to hateful and over-the-line rhetoric and time after time, he has failed to do so. If this is the ‘leadership’ he has shown on the campaign trail, what can the American people expect of him as commander-in-chief?” So there you have it. There is absolutely nothing worse than a man of Governor Romney’s stature staying quiet while awful things are said about his opponent. This is something that Obama would never find himself on the wrong end of. Unless of course when he was exactly on the other end of it just last year. From Buzzfeed : Democrats are capitalizing on comments made at town hall by a woman asking a question who said President Obama should be tried for treason, comments not immediately disavowed by Mitt Romney. In 2011, during a Labor Day rally with Obama rally, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa said Democrats should “take these [Republican] sons of bitches out”. WH Advisor Daniel Pfeiffer responded in an interview with AM 630 that officials shouldn’t be responsible for everything said and don’t have to serve as the “speech police. ” (emphasis mine) Here’s the audio: And I thought Romney was supposed to be the flip flopper. Follow @BenHowe
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Obama Was Against Disavowing. Before He Was For It.
Most characteristic of this preaching [of the Great Leap Forward] was its utopianism, the promise of a bright future just in the offing, “three years of suffering leading to a thousand years of happiness.” — Franz Schurmann writing in Ideology and Organization in Communist China Forward! Comrades, you can’t make it up. Can you say “campaign blunder”? Or is it a blunder? Is it deliberate? The socialist mind at work in campaign mode? The Obama campaign has picked a portion of one of the most infamous socialist slogans of 20 th century history to use as its own new campaign slogan. “Forward” is the new Obama slogan, Team Obama borrowing boldly from none other than the late Communist Party of China leader Chairman Mao. Mao’s slogan? “The Great Leap Forward.” Rather than describing this myself, let’s take a tour of various descriptions of this wonderful, Communist slogan. Here’s Wikipedia :
In May 2011, when asked by CBS News about why he would not release photos of the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama said, “We don’t need to spike the football.” How much things have changed in a year. As we’ve approached this week’s third anniversary of that happy moment when the mass murderer was lobotomized by a Navy SEAL’s bullet, bin Laden-related chest thumping has become the administration’s campaign tactic-of-the-week. At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night, Barack Obama touted that “last year at this time — in fact, on this very weekend — we finally delivered justice to one of the world’s most notorious individuals.” Even Hillary Clinton has been waxing nostalgic about the bin Laden raid, evoking images of sleep-deprived heroes (such as herself) being revived by crowds cheering outside the White House gates following news of the terrorist’s death. In a new web ad called “One Chance,” former President Bill Clinton — oddly chummy with Obama of late — says that Obama “took the harder and the more honorable path” by ordering the raid on bin Laden’s Pakistan compound. The ad goes on to quote Mitt Romney’s 2007 comment that “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” implying that a President Romney might not have ordered the assault on bin Laden given the same information that Obama had. It is a reprehensible — and literally incredible — assertion. Not surprisingly, the Obama ad does not mention Romney’s clarification a few weeks later: his point was that bin Laden would be replaced and that killing him would not mean the end of al Qaeda. During a 2007 debate , Romney made his view on bin Laden crystal clear: “We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person. Because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another.… It’s more than Osama bin Laden. But he is going to pay, and he will die.” (See Romney’s remarks at about 6:40 into this video of the May 3, 2007 Republican debate.) The Miami Herald notes several instances of Barack Obama saying that the issue of bin Laden should not be used by himself or by others (such as Hillary “Do I look as tired as I feel” Clinton) to score political points. But of course, that’s just what the president is doing now. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The Herald also reports the Romney camp’s response to the “One Chance” ad: “The killing of Osama bin Laden was a momentous day for all Americans and the world, and Governor Romney congratulated the military, our intelligence agencies, and the President. It’s now sad to see the Obama campaign seek to use an event that unified our country to once again divide us, in order to try to distract voters’ attention from the failures of his administration. With 23 million Americans struggling for work, our national debt soaring, and household budgets being squeezed like never before, Mitt Romney is focused on strengthening America at home and abroad.” As if the web ad weren’t hypocritical and pathetically self-serving enough, the president sat down with NBC’s Brian Williams for an “exclusive interview” to be aired on Wednesday. The interview is, according to MSNBC, “the first for network television” to be filmed inside the White House Situation Room, from where the administration’s national security team watched the bin Laden raid take place. This is almost as much an indictment of NBC News as it is of the president, but complaining about liberal media bias is like complaining about a puppy peeing on your rug: it’s just what they do. If you don’t like it, don’t buy a puppy — and don’t watch NBC News. The Obama administration is flustered by the lack of traction by his other recent divisive campaign tactics. It’s doing anything it can to distract from Obama’s record, pointing to the one rousing success of his administration — but one that would be hard to imagine any other president not grabbing should the same opportunity have arisen. As Republican strategist and Romney advisor Ed Gillespie said on Meet the Press , “this is one of the reasons President Obama has become one of the most divisive presidents in American history. He took something that was a unifying event for all Americans, an event that Governor Romney congratulated him and the military and the intelligence analysts in our government for completing the mission in terms of killing Osama bin Laden. And he’s managed to turn it into a divisive, partisan, political attack that former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci for President Reagan called ‘sad.’ John McCain called ‘shameful.’ I think most Americans will see it as a sign of a desperate campaign.” Indeed, if there is one thing that Americans should learn from the Wednesday interview, it is that President Obama simply has nothing else he can talk about that will appeal to the broader American electorate. His record is one of economic suppression and radical leftist policy that only energizes his “Progressive” base. Even many of those can’t be too pleased with their employment prospects after more than three years of an Obama presidency. And ironically, they are the people (other than terrorists themselves) least pleased with Obama’s aggressive use of drones to kill terrorist enemies of America, one of the few laudable policies of this administration. With friends like that… Perhaps Romney, with his response to the Obama web ad, is following the advice of Jed Babbin who suggests on these pages that in order to beat Barack Obama in November, “Romney will have to be much tougher in his own right, and ready to respond with the appropriate level of vehemence to Team Obama’s attacks.” This goes hand-in-glove with Michelle Malkin’s advice to Mitt Romney to stop saying that Obama is a “nice guy” and instead discuss this administration’s many (non-terrorist) victims. With that in mind, a few ideas for Romney on this anniversary of bin Laden’s death: “If only President Obama weren’t as effective at killing the economy as he is at killing terrorists…” (Substitute “freedom” for “the economy” occasionally, especially when trying to capture libertarians, Tea Party activists, and Ron Paul supporters.) “It’s unfortunate that President Obama thinks that the EPA’s relationship to jobs should be the same as the Navy SEALs’ relationship to Osama bin Laden.” “It’s too bad Barack Obama won’t go outside his leftist comfort zone to help all Americans the way he does to hurt a few terrorists.” And slightly tangential to bin Laden: “If President Obama were doing such a good job, why is he having so many of his campaign messages delivered by people named Clinton?” The recent hype about the killing of bin Laden is a sign of Obama’s weakness, not his strength. Obama knows it, NBC News knows it, and it’s time for Mitt Romney to make sure voters know it — and make sure it sticks.
