The Obama Platform

Let's put this in it's simplest form.   What is the Obama platform right now, in June 2012, less than five months before the election?

The Economy

1. Higher taxes.
2. Huge deficits and debt.
3. Intrusive regulations.
4. Socialized medicine.
5. Crony capitalism (Solyndra, etc.).
6. Bowing to unions (SEIU, etc.)

Foreign Policy

7. Retreat from the War on Terrorism (Iraq, Afghanistan).
8. Appeasing Russia and offending our allies (Poland re missile defense).
9. Anti-Israel.
10. Weakening our military.

Social Policy.

11. Gay marriage.
12. Pro-abortion extremism.
13. Anti-Catholicism.


Does anyone think that platform is attractive, other than die-hard, anti-American leftist academics?

Put it even simpler:  there are three great challenges to America in the 21st Century.   The failure of European-style social democracy as a model for modern economies.   The threat of radical Islamist ideology.   The decay of marriage and the family and traditional morals and the bankruptcy of the "liberation" promulgated by the 1960s generation.    Obama is on the wrong side of history in each case.

Hugh Hewitt Nails It

Hugh Hewitt nails the increasingly obvious "emperor has no clothes" conclusion about the Obama team:

What if the president and his team aren't competent at campaigns?  Heresy, I know, but put aside the 2008 win and mark it down to the unique circumstances against running in the middle of financial panic against a great American who happened to be a terrible candidate, and doing so with a massive financial advantage, bolstered by a fawning press corps in a complete swoon, and at the close of an eight-year presidency that had bee surrounded by controversy since before it began....

What if, say it quietly now, he's just a loser with a lucky streak and the love of the Beltway-Manhattan media elite?...

What if Axelrod, Plouffe and Messina are the Larry, Curly and Moe of politics just as they have been of policy, and their candidate Chance the Gardener?  

Sure, the president is bound to have a couple of good weeks.  Mitt Romney is bound to stumble a few times.  There will be an Obama bounce and the MSM will declare in unison that all is well and the president is shaking off his lethargy.

But what if he isn't, and what if he doesn't?  What if he really is just the worst possible fellow to be in the White House and his "dream team" of consultants a really lucky group of third-tiers who ought never to have left Chicago?

Time to Panic for the Obama Campaign

Karen Tumulty in the Washington Post has an article questioning whether it's time for Democrats to panic.   Based on my analysis of the 2008 voting map, I think it is.

My overarching premise is that Obama, after four years of a real record will inevitably be less popular than he was when he could run simply as an attractive ideal... the man of "hope and change."   This is regardless of whether you think that record is good (but who really does?) or bad (which it is).   So I believe that two things will inevitably happen:

1. Romney will hold all of the states that McCain won.   Obama isn't going to win over people who didn't vote for him in the first instance.   McCain won 173 electoral votes, but with reapportionment after the 2010 census, this gets Romney to 179.

2. Romney will win every state that was close, defined as states where Obama got less than 52% of the vote.   These include Florida, Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio, as well as the 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska.    This gets Romney all the way to 253 electoral votes, very close to the 270 he needs to become President.

But if the inevitable wearing-off of the glow of Obamamania from 2008 -- the realization by so many Americans that, even if they still prefer Democratic policies, they were bamboozled and made to look foolish by the rhetoric of "hope" and Obama's vaunted "coolness" -- gets you almost all the way there, the reality of Obama's dismal record of high unemployment, extraordinary deficits, weakness abroad, and scandals (Fast and Furious, Solyndra, national security leaks), together with the bloom-is-off-the-rose fact that the media now appears to notice his gaffes ("the private sector is doing just fine"), means that a significant number of other states that were in the 52-55% range for Obama in 2008 will now flip.   Those states range from Virginia (52.6%) to Nevada (55.1%), with Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Minnesota, and Colorado in between.    If those states flip, here's what the map looks like:

And that's before you consider other states with popular Republican governors, including Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), New Jersey (14 votes), and New Mexico (5 electoral votes).   Just today Rasmussen has Romney ahead in Wisconsin, 47-44, with 9% undecided.   Does anyone really believe that undecideds will break toward Obama in this election?   And Romney may have a real chance in his original home state of Michigan (16 electoral votes), where his father was governor, and where the economy is particularly terrible.  

Time to panic, indeed.

A Picture That Says It All

From Michael Ramirez via Powerline:

A Scenario to Muse Upon

As I've written recently, the leak scandal threatens to undermine the single tangible achievement of Obama in foreign policy -- the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden.   The narrative is inching ever-closer to becoming, not "Obama got Osama," but... "look what a jerk Obama is in using military or intelligence successes for self-aggrandizement."  

A similar effect has been happening with his economic policy.   By now, and particularly with the May jobs numbers, no one is seriously arguing that his signature program, the huge stimulus enacted in early 2009, has worked to turn the economy around.

By the end of June the third shoe could drop.   If the Supreme Court rules that Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional, as they should, and that the rest of the legislation is so dependent on the individual mandate that it isn't "severable," that would mean that his greatest legislative triumph, the power grab by the federal government that he spent all of his political capital on in 2009 and 2010, ends up being a big fat nothingburger.

So, if you're keeping score at home:

1.  Osama bin Laden = character flaw for the self-aggrandizing, puffed-up armchair warrior President.

2.  Stimulus = wasteful folly/ultimate example of crony capitalism run amuck.

3.  Obamacare = unconstitutional waste of time.

What will Obama run on?   His charm?

Not likely.

Girl of the Day - Natalie Wood

Fifty years ago this week, Life magazine featured Natalie Wood on its cover in a photo shoot on a sailboat at Cannes.   Sad and a little bit spooky, given her drowning death years later, but she's still my favorite GotD.

On the Wisconsin Recall and National Implications

Craig Gilbert at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a very interesting article up about the voter breakdown in the Wisconsin recall election for Governor.   This graphic in particular is very interesting:

What this shows is that the Democratic vote was incredibly localized to two communities -- Madison and Milwaukee.   In other words, it shows what many have observed for some time... the Democratic Party has become the party of governmental bureaucrats/college professors (Madison) and urban blacks (Milwaukee).   That's not a party that is going to have much appeal for much of the rest of America, who correctly see big cities and big state governments and liberal college campuses as anathema to how they live their lives.  

Substitute the two coasts for Madison and Milwaukee, and the liberal concentration in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Boston-New York-Washington, D.C. corridor, and I think this graphic could be replicated in November.   You'll see Obama winning California, Washington, Oregon, and then the northeastern states (except maybe New Hampshire).   But he won't win anything other than Illlinois and maybe Michigan in between.

It's like it's two different countries.

Ronald Reagan Can Get Him Some Satisfaction

The satisfaction of liberating Eastern Europe.   Today is also (and more importantly) the 25th anniversary of Reagan's famous "tear down this wall" speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

Obama bows to foreign leaders and apologizes for America.   Reagan said forthrightly that America was great and moral, and that communism was an Evil Empire.   The contrast could not be more stark.  

I Can't Get No... Sat-is-fac-tion

On June 12, 1965, the Rolling Stones released the hit that made them worldwide stars, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction."   In his autobiography, Keith Richards claims he wrote the song in his sleep.   The distinctive guitar sound came from a Gibson fuzzbox, which Richards says he used simply to create a demo that they would later substitute a horn section for.   That never happened, the record was released, and the rest is history.

Wherever it came from, this is arguably the greatest opening guitar hook to a rock song ever:




Here are the Stones playing "Satisfaction" on the Ed Sullivan show... they look a bit bemused.

The Regular Guy Believes Fixing What's Wrong With America Will Be Easy for President Romney

Imagine if in President Mitt Romney's first 100 days he (and, hopefully, a Republican House and Senate) can do the following:

1. Put in place a significant plan (Paul Ryan's) to reduce entitlement spending.
2. Cut other discretionary federal government spending by 10%.
3. Cut marginal income tax rates.
4. Cut the corporate income tax rate.
5. Make permanent the Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains.
6. Enact fast-track legislation for approving oil drilling in ANWR, off America's coasts, and on federal lands.
7. Enact fast-track legislation for approving oil pipelines and new refineries.
8. Enact fast-track legislation for building new nuclear power plants.
9. Task his cabinet officers with reducing regulation in their departments by 50% in four years.
10. Eliminate complete departments and return those responsibilities to the states, starting with the Education Department.
11. Repeal Obamacare.
12. Repeal Dodd-Frank.
13. Increase funding for building a larger, more modern blue-water Navy.
14. Propose and fund a NASA mission to Mars, with the goal of landing men on the planet by 2025.
15. Propose, fast-track and fund building the world's tallest building in Manhattan to replace the World Trade Center.

Smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation, cheap and abundant energy, fiscal responsbility, a strong military, and an America that reestablishes itself as the country that dreams big dreams and then accomplishes them.

That's an America I'd like to live in.  

More on Leaks

Here's a good read from The American Spectator on the national security implications of the Obama Administration's leaks:

CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta should be called before a joint closed hearing of both intelligence committees to explain their preliminary damage assessments.

Waiting for final assessments could take years that the White House shouldn't be allowed.
In those hearings, the committees can learn which sources and methods were compromised. They can learn -- to the extent our intelligence community knows -- how Iran is responding to the disclosures, and how the Pakistani and Afghan governments are changing their behavior toward us as a result of the leaks.

When they learn these things, the committees can disclose their own judgments of how severe the damage is. They can't disclose the details, but they can say that there was damage and characterize whether they believe it was significant.

But that is the limit of what Congress can do. It is up to Mitt Romney, as the leader of the Republican Party, to choose to make the Obama leaks a campaign issue.

So far, Romney has been silent on this and too many other issues. If he chooses to remain silent on the Obama leaks, he will surrender the issue leaving Obama to continue the leaking and gain whatever political advantage within reach. Instead, Romney could and should seize upon the issue. Romney should speak out quickly, joining in the bipartisan call for an investigation and asking the intelligence committees to hold the closed hearings to obtain the assessments of damage.

When -- and if -- the committees hold those hearings, Romney should use whatever they may disclose to make a major speech on the issue, calling the Obama administration to account for its actions against our nation's security.

One thing that occurred to me is that this issue cannot come at a worse time for Obama.   He has presided over a horrible economy that his policies have made worse.   He has given offense to Catholics and people of faith generally with his idiotic HHS mandate on contraception, a clear (and utterly unnecessary) affront to religious liberty.   The one thing he had going for himself is that he "got" Osama bin Laden.   But this leak scandal inevitably paints that singular foreign policy triumph as a thread in the pattern of Obama's self-aggrandizement and creepy passive-aggressiveness in foreign policy.   Waterboarding, no; drone assassinations in bulk, sure.   Guantanamo, no; but kill squads in Pakastan, sure.   Iran at a crisis point; who cares... it's an election year, so let's reveal our most secret program of cyber-espionage.  

The rationale for Obama's re-election is crumbling in real time.   Rasmussen has Romney up 47-44 just since Friday's "doing fine" gaffee on the economy.   If the leak scandal gets traction, that gap may grow.  

Put it this way... Obama has been consistently hovering around 45% in the polls.   Given his performance, who among the group of 55% who haven't decided to vote for Obama yet are going to decide that he deserves a second term?   He's at his max now, and it's not enough.

Leaks

Remember the Valerie Plame case?   A State Department official, Richard Armitage, supposedly "outed" Ms. Plame as a covert CIA agent (even though she hadn't been covert for more than five years and was working openly at the Langley CIA headquarters).   A huge media-driven scandal ensued, complete with special prosecutors who went after senior White House officials (notably, Karl Rove) and, ultimately, yielded a "perjury trap" conviction of Scooter Libby of Dick Cheney's staff, who, it turned out, had nothing to do with the original leak.  

So with that standard of vigorous prosecution of "national security" leaks -- I put it in scare quotes because I've never seen any evidence that revealing Valerie Plame's identiy endangered any ongoing operations -- what will happen with the latest leaks to the New York Times of stories about Obama's "kill list" for drone assassinations of al Qaeda leaders and America's involvement in the Stuxnet computer virus that targeted Iran's nuclear program?

The Senate will investigate recent national security leaks to the news media after articles in The New York Times about a “kill list” for terrorists and the use of cyberweapons against Iran, a Senate official said on Tuesday.

 

Tara Andringa, a spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the committee would hold hearings “pertaining to recent public reports of classified information.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said in a statement: “Today I sent a classified letter to the president outlining my deep concerns about the release of this information. I made it clear that disclosures of this type endanger American lives and undermine America’s national security.” She said she had discussed the possibility of joint hearings with Mr. Levin.

The announcement of hearings came after two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the leaks.

“Such disclosures can only undermine similar ongoing or future operations and, in this sense, compromise national security,” Mr. McCain said on the Senate floor. “For this reason, regardless of how politically useful these leaks may be to the president, they have to stop.”

How this story gets treated by the mainstream media in an election year will either (a) result in prosecutions and Pulitzer Prizes; or (b) result in a big fat nothing and reveal the MSM to be completely in the pocket of Obama.

Wanna bet on the outcome?

Birthday Today - John Constable

The Regular Son loves English landscape painting, particularly JMW Turner and Constable.   It's Constable's birthday... he was born in the annus mirabilis of 1776.  

For your viewing pleasure, here are two Constable renderings of Brighton Beach, in dark and light moods:

Girl of the Day - Swedish Version

We were talking with our Swedish houseguests last night and the name Anita Ekberg came up.   I described her a classic "blonde bombshell"; our guest came up with the fact that she was famous for the scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vita where she cavorts in the Trevi Fountain in Rome.   This is the least cheesecake-y shot of her I could come up with -- Ekberg was a famous pin-up girl in the 1950s -- continuing my resolution to tone-down the fleshiness of the Regular Guy Believes.

You're Kidding, Right?

UPDATE: James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise blog, echoes my comments below:

But is it really? Is the private sector “doing fine?”
1. Private-sector jobs have increased by an average of just 105,000 over the past three months and by just 89,000 a month during the entire Obama Recovery.  In 1983 and 1984, during the supply-side Reagan Boom, private sector jobs increased by an average of 292,000 a month. Adjusted for population, that number is more like 375,000 private-sector jobs a month
2. If the labor force participation rate for May had just stayed where it was in April, the unemployment rate would have risen to 8.4%. As it is, the U.S. economy is suffering is longest sustained bout of 8% unemployment or higher since the Great Depression.
3. Private-sector GDP rose just 2.6% in the first quarter, after rising a measly 1.2% last year.  By contrast, private-sector GDP rose 3.8% in 1983 and 6.5% in 1984 during the supply-side Reagan Boom.
4. The U.S. stock market is down 7% since early April.
5. Real take-home pay is down over the past year.
6. That first-quarter GDP report also showed that after-tax corporate profits dropped for the first time in three years. Major red flag.

***

This almost needs no gloss:




4.3 million jobs in 27 months?   Hmmmm... that works out to a non-robust 160,000 jobs a month.  

Let's put this in perspective.   In the first five months of 1984, the American economy under Ronald Reagan added 1.87 million jobs, or nearly 375,000 a month, on a base that was roughly 40 million workers smaller than the economy today.   That's a far cry from Obama's last two months of 77,000 and 69,000, isn't it?   From his first inauguration to reelection day in November 1984, the American economy under Reagan was up 4.9 million jobs, again on a much smaller base.    For Obama to match that record even in gross terms, he would have to add nearly a million jobs a month from now until election day.

Oh, by the way, Obama's math is wrong anyway.   From March 2010 through May 2012 (27 months), the economy added only 3.6 million jobs according to the BLS.  Wishful thinking?   Lying?   You decide.

 

Birthday Today - Tom Jones

I've been reading the really great memoir by Keith Richards called simply Life and at one point (so far) his path crosses with Tom Jones, the campy British singer.   It occurred to me -- this also applies to the series Mad Men -- that no era is ever monolithic.   At the same time the Stones are writing Paint it Black or Sympathy for the Devil or Gimme Shelter (maybe the greatest rock and roll song ever), there was an entirely different (but not necessarily separate) side of the culture doing this sort of thing:

Where Were You on D-Day, Daddy?

I don't have strong feelings against gay marriage.   To me, gay marriage as an issue is a distraction from the real issues of the day -- the size and scope of government, governmental debt, taxes that are too high, regulations that are too intrusive; the threats of resurgent Russia, the economic competition from a growing China, the dangers of a nuclear Iran and a nuclear Pakistan; the decadence of American and Western culture.   At worst, it's a symptom of the decay of the family and marriage, not a cause.

That being said, it is highly suggestive to me that on June 6th, a date that probably ought to be a holiday in America, and in any event ought to be celebrated by our Presidents, here is what President Obama was doing:

 At a gay rights dinner last year in New York City, when President Obama listed gay-friendly policies he had enacted, hecklers shouted, "Marriage!"

At a similar event Wednesday night in Beverly Hills, nearly a month after the president embraced gay marriage, there was no heckling. Instead, 600 supporters at the LGBT Leadership Council event rose to their feet as one, chanting, "Four more years!"

L.A.'s gay community turned out in force to celebrate the man who has been dubbed the nation's "first gay president."

The event at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel was part of a two-day fundraising swing through California and Nevada during which Obama was expected to raise more than $15 million for his reelection effort. He started the day in San Francisco and ended with a $25,000-per-person dinner for 70 at the Beverly Hills home of "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy.

As far as I can tell, there were no Presidential events yesterday honoring the heroes of D-Day.  

Shame.

The Boys of Pointe du Hoc

The great Ronald Reagan's greatest speech?   Probably.   This is the main portion of the speech he gave on the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984:

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps -- millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- at the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life...and left the vivid air signed with your honor…."

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying. And in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: "Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do." Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."

Sorry for such a long post.   This is mostly for the benefit of the Regular Son.   Lest we forget.

***

Here is Ronaldus Maximus giving the speech.   Great stuff.

The Limits of Exit Polls

UPDATE:  Michael Barone today concluded that the exit polls, when reweighted to account for the standard Democratic bias, actually showed a dead heat between Romney and Obama.   He also waggishly recalled that an academic study of exit polling errors showed that they were most biased toward Democrats where the interviewers were female graduate students.   Hmmmm....

***

Some liberals in the media were touting the exit polls last night that showed Obama still leading Romney in Wisconsin by 51-44.   Since the Regular Guy was one of the few who called a blowout for Walker before yesterday's results (see below), let me add my two cents. 

Ignore it.

That's right, ignore the exit poll showing Obama still beating Romney in Wisconsin.  

First, these are the same polls that showed Walker and Barrett in a dead heat on election day.   So they were about seven points off.   It's highly likely they'd be the same amount off in assessing Obama's support.

Second, the polls obviously won't take into account the effect of the Walker triumph itself.   Low information voters/independents/self-styled "moderates" tend to break toward the side they think is winning.   Republicans are winning, and winning breeds more winning.

Third, Wisconsin's most popular politicians are all Republicans -- Ron Johnson, Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and former Governor Tommy Thompson.    All will be out there in force campaigning with Romney.   Thompson will be the Republicans' U.S. Senate nominee running against a very weak Democratic candidate for Herb Kohl's open seat in November.   He will win easily, and that win will drive the Republican vote for President too.

Fourth, Wisconsin was very very close in 2000 and 2004.   It was only a Democratic blowout in the annus horribilus of 2008.   A closely divided state is the default; a Democratic majority is the exception.

Finally, there is a real chance with the continued bad national economy and repudiations like Wisconsin (and Democrats like Bill Clinton jumping ship and throwing Obama under the bus) that there will be a "preference cascade" against Obama.   People are tired of his act, tired of his whining excuses, tired of his narcisissism, tired of his incompetence.   Once it becomes socially acceptable to criticize Obama and come out against him, I'd expect a lot of so-called "moderates" to break for Romney.

Blaming Bush Shouldn't Work Anymore, Should It?

One of the more distasteful attributes of Obama's failed leadership is that he is still blaming President Bush and the difficulties he inherited for his current problems.   But Ace makes a good point:

Scott Walker was only in office for two and a change years, rather than Obama's three and change years, but Scott Walker's reforms produced tangible, positive results in that time-frame, whereas Obama is still blibble-blabbing about "needing more time."

Exactly so.  What you also haven't heard from Walker is... it's still former Democratic Governor Jim Doyle's fault.   He didn't come in and whine, he came in and offered solutions to problems, and his proposed alternatives tworked.   As the old saying goes, Walker's policies have the "added benefit" of being true.

Hitler is Unhappy About the Wisconsin Recall Result

For those of you who aren't hip to this genre, there are a million of these on different topics, with different subtitles over the same Hitler-in-the-bunker-as-the-war-is-lost scene.   So Hitler getting the news that Scott Walker had won the recall election was inevitable.  

Still... pretty funny:

Girl of the Day - Maria Montez

Here's a new one for me... actress Maria Montez, born a hundred years ago today in 1912.   She was Dominican, and rose to fame playing hot-blooded Latin seductresses in big-budget Technicolor films like Arabian Nights (1942), White Savage (1943), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), Cobra Woman (1944), Gypsy Wildcat (1944), and Sudan (1945).

Never Forget

It's June 6th, D-Day.   Sixty-eight years later, it is proper to pause today and remember those men who gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy as the Allies began their effort to take Europe back from the forces of darkness.

GOTV

UPDATE:

I voted this morning at about 9:00 am in Wauwatosa, a close-in suburb of Milwaukee.   I waited until after the pre-work rush, but the line was still pretty long... out the gym and into the hallway.   It's a pretty pro-Walker neighborhood, with lots of yard signs.   The gal behind me, whom I know from church, commented that she had never been so excited to vote.   Lots of good vibes.   I was in the 400s already... the total vote in the primary last month was something like 660, so I'd say turnout is heavy, which matches what's being reported locally on call-in shows like Charlie Sykes and Jay Weber.  

My gut tells me that this is going to be a big Walker victory, maybe a blowout.

***

It's all about turnout now.

Girl of the Day - Rosalind Russell

The Regular Son has taken note of the old man's propensity to put gratuitous flesh on the blog, and has questioned the propriety of said practice.   True, at some point, the Regular Guy Believes segued from featuring actresses of old to, well, cheesecake of the SI swimsuit variety.   Some of that came from a misguided attempt to drive page views; some of it laziness; some of it, sadly, prurience.  Ah, well.   When your teenaged son questions the morality of your posts, you're both doing something wrong and something very right.   (This is the same Regular Son who pushed me to convert to Catholicism this year.)  So, in an attempt to return to a purer format, today's Girl of the Day is an oldy, Rosalind Russell, born today in 1908, who was one of the great sharp-talking dames of 1930s screwball comedy, especially with Cary Grant in His Girl Friday:

The Enthusiasm Gap in the Walker Recall Election... and in November

These numbers are telling for me.  

Number of Absentee Ballots Returned in Milwaukee County (a Democratic stronghold): 34,624

Number of Absentee Ballots Returned in Waukesha County (a Republican stronghold):  27,131

But Milwaukee County has roughly 2.5 times the population of Waukesha County.   So what these numbers tell me is that Republicans are more enthused about voting (at least about voting early) than Democrats are, despite a well-publicized push by Democrats to get out their early vote.  

Republicans are enthused by voting for Walker because they know he's right and they know he's doing the right things for Wisconsin.    Democrats are disspirited for the same reason... it's tough to face that yoru sacred cows (collective bargaining, teachers' unions, public service) are actually bad for your community, when you've grown up as a liberal thinking they were noble and good.   It's no wonder they're unhappy and unexcited about the election.

The same thing holds true for November.   Republicans know that the ideas of Paul Ryan about the budget, about the Catholic Church regarding religious freedom, about conservatives regarding taxation and economic growth are right, and the liberal democratic shibboleths of unions and deficit spending and high taxation and government regulation are wrong.   So we have the great energizing faith that we are on the side of the angels.   Democrats know in their hearts that much of what they've believed in has been foolish, and, in particular, that the horse they've hitched their wagon too, Obama, is a nag, not a stud.   So they're unhappy, and it will show up in November in lower turnout and a bigger than expected loss for Democrats (and what I hope and believe will be a relative landslide for Romney).  

Are You Going to Believe Me, or Your Lying Eyes?

Compare and contrast.

Elizabeth Warren a/k/a "Fauxcohontas," Harvard Law professor and Democratic candidate for Senate in Massachusetts.

Not Indian.

Cher, singer-actress-1960s style maven:

Potentially Indian.   Note the high cheekbones and feathers.

***

UPDATE:   In an interview today, Warren apparently now claims that some of her great-great-great grandparents were gypsies, tramps and thieves.

Another Chart That Spells D-O-O-M For Obama

James Pethokoukis has done yeoman's work unpacking the failures of Obama's economic program.   Here is his revision of the infamous Romer-Bernstein chart prepared by Obama's economic team to sell the stimulus (Rush calls it the "Porkulus") package in early 2009.   They predicted that, if the stimulus was enacted, unemployment would never get above 8%.   How's that hopey-changey stuff working out?

Girl of the Day - Not a Hard Call

It's Marilyn Monroe's birthday today... she would have been 86.  

She doesn't look it.

Two Stories, One Story - Rats Jumping Ship

Today's employment release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is not good for the Obama campaign, to say the least.   The economy created a lowly 69,000 jobs in May, and the April number was revised downward to only 77,000 jobs.   Neither of those figures approaches "replacement" levels -- the number of jobs the economy needs to create simply to keep up with population growth.   Meanwhile, the number everyone watches (but shouldn't), the unemployment rate, ticked upward to 8.2%, in part because, as summer approaches, more people enter the work force.   Again, that's bad for Obama.   But, as I keep saying, forget about these monthly fluctuations.   Here is all you need to know about what Obama has meant to the "recovery":

We had a recession that started before Obama took office.   Granted.   Not his fault (although arguably it was the fault of the Democratic Congress that took office in January 2007... look where the inflection point of the graph is).   But what has he done to pull us out of the recession?   Nothing.   His policies -- high taxes, high regulation, radical changes (Obamacare) that create uncertainty -- have exacerbated and elongated the recession, and delayed any recovery.   That's what this graph of the employment to population ratio shows.   63% to 58.5% from peak to the continuing trough.   That's 4.5% of the working population, or about 10-12 million fewer people with jobs.   That's bad.   It's time for a change.

That's the first story.   Here's the second.   Bill Clinton in an interview yesterday described Romney's tenure at Bain as a "sterling business career" and "good work."   Just a week or so ago, Obama described Romney's career at Bain as "what this campaign will be about."   You can take this to the bank... Clinton would love to see Obama lose and will do everything he can (albeit subtly) to reposition himself (and Hillary) as the real leaders of the Democratic Party in advance of a Hillary run in 2016.   That's why he's undercutting the Obama message on Bain.   And that's why he's in Wisconsin today to campaign for Tom Barrett in the recall election... it's a way of embarrassing Obama, who hasn't shown up to help Barrett.