This is something we see very rarely in our corrupt media, a backlash against an obvious attempt by the Obama campaign to create a distraction away from the big issues of the day. Obviously, in the face of falling poll numbers and Romney’s well-received foreign policy speech yesterday, Obama’s Media Palace Guards just don’t see “absurd” distractions as good strategy at the exact time Romney is looking more and more presidential.
Meanwhile, the people who run Sesame Street have demanded that the ad come down.
The Obama campaign seems to be in meltdown mode.
[Update a few minutes later]
[Update mid afternoon]
Those who point out that eliminating mere small-fry outlays like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting won’t balance the budget are undeniably correct — but it is also undeniably correct that we will not balance the budget without eliminating a lot of small-fry outlays like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We have to do the big-ticket items and the little ones as well, lest we spare the taxpayer the guillotine only to abandon him to a death by a thousand forgone cuts. While Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are rolling out big ideas on taxes, entitlements, and deficits, Barack Obama is clinging to his toys like a frightened child, which very well may be what he is feeling like after his recent trip to the woodshed.
And Obama had it right four years ago:
“…if you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.”
It’s hard to get much smaller than this.
[Bumped]
…..and the meltdown is accelerating
The media is beginning to realize how deeply they’ve betrayed the public’s trust, that they’re facing four years of an opposition administration and that no one will believe even their honest, justifiable criticisms.
They’re steeling themselves to throw Obama under the media bus, to make up for four years of sycophancy in one panicky month.
The only way they could possibly redeem American journalism would be to resign, and make no public appearances other true, public confessions and acts of contrition. One such act would be frequent appearances at J schools saying, Don’t do as we did.
I wish I could gloat about this, but I can’t. We’re going to need to hold Romney’s feet to the fire, hell, his balls, and we’re going to find the bellows are rotten.
Wasn’t Romney the one who brought up Big Bird, as the only example of government spending that he’d cut?
a) He didn’t say it was the only place he’d cut and b) even if he did, does that make this ad smart?
It was the only example he offered in the debate. On his website he comes up with this list:
Privatize Amtrak — Savings: $1.6 Billion.
Reduce Subsidies For The National Endowments For The Arts And Humanities, The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, And The Legal Services Corporation — Savings: $600 Million.
Eliminate Title X Family Planning Funding — Savings: $300 Million.
Reduce Foreign Aid — Savings: $100 Million.
Total savings: less than $3 billion (which wouldn’t even pay for the Obamacare repeal)
Since you/he brings it up, would you rather increase funding to all that? Or… it’s ok as it is?
Or… shut up?
I’d increase funding to all those things.
The rest of us… “I am shocked.”
“There’s gambling going on here in Casablanca?”
Brought up Big Bird, well yes Romney did. Tied it to his campaign and tried to make it a winner; Obama did that all on his own. Not that I’m complaining. Perhaps there are some anti-war types more concerned about losing PBS than the broken promises from the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, or a union worker more afraid of Elmo losing a job than themselves being out of work. I just don’t think it is big tent material myself. Perhaps after the election, Jim will say it was just bad luck that Obama decided to focus on a large yellow fowl than the fundamentals of government.
As with everything else, Obama is presenting Romney’s position dishonestly and making up Rommey quotes. Have you noticed how Obama has a habit of statements like, “Rommey said X” where X is something that Romney never said?
Romney never said that Big Bird was the driving force behind the deficit but Obama said Romney said that.
Obama is a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen of his own construction. That’s why he lost the debate. He was expecting Strawman Mitt to show up and was unprepared to meet the genuine article. From reports, he was so self-deluded that he actually believed he won the debate.
Today, the Obama campaign is officially in a death spiral.
Romney appears to be crushing Obama in Ohio (+20 indies according to one poll!) and is up 2 even in a D+9 poll today.
We’ll see how tonight’s debate goes, maybe they stanch the bleeding a bit if Ryan struggles.
The debate is Thursday, not tonight. And I find it hard to imagine Ryan struggling against Joe the Gaffetastic Biden.
Rand, but Joe’s got lies on his side. Kinda hard to debate a guy who just makes stuff up.
I find it hard to imagine Ryan struggling against Joe the Gaffetastic Biden.
I think he’ll be struggling hard to keep a straight face.
Some of those polls are R+. Winston Wolf rule in effect.
Yes, they lay the foundation for the closing media narrative: Obama as the “Comeback Kid” after the next two debates.
Suffolk to stop polling VA, NC and FL because Romney has them won!
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/09/suffolk-pollster-were-not-polling-florida-virginia-or-north-carolina-anymore-because-romneys-going-to-win-them/
And Suffolk tends to lean a bit left!
I find it interesting that Sesame Street Inc. is having problems with pols using their images. These are businessmen as well after all. Unlike the president they know the peril that alienating half the country can bring to your product.
Big Bird is a billionaire, which makes him part of the 1%. He and the rest of the felt-faces don’t need us subsidizing them.
Obama is presenting Romney’s position dishonestly and making up Rommey quotes
The Campaigner-in-Chief, and the people that surround Him, seem to think that the more He keeps running against this strawman He keeps calls “Mitt Romney”, the more likely it is that the rest of us will share in His delusions. Okay, whatever…
At least Obama is willing to stand up for today’s college graduates who got their degrees in puppetry, trying to enter an already hard-hit sector of the economy.
Heck, you could turn that into an ad.
It could include Bruce Willis: “maybe that mime”.
Coincidentally, a new study in a British medical journal says Big Bird is harmful to children’s health.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/09/ban-under-threes-watching-television
From what I’ve been seeing, even the left is getting indigestion from this ad. It had a list of wall street criminals – all put away by the Bush justice dept. They found that awkward and exasperating.
My favorite comment of the day; Obama is defending Big Bird. US embassies and ambassadors, not so much.
There’s also the small matter of whether there’s any justification of any kind for federal outlays of this kind — regardless of the existence of hundreds of cable and satellite channels and the internet.
This is an example of something I raised in a previous thread: besides the math, there’s also a moral component to the argument for smaller government: Elmer Fed is doing things he has no business doing, things he’s been doing for decades that have raised people’s comfort level with big government — and need to be eliminated for that reason as well as any others people might offer.
we will not balance the budget without eliminating a lot of small-fry outlays
And yet Clinton did.
This is a bit like arguing that no, the change between the sofa cushions won’t pay the credit card bill, but it is “undeniably correct” that we won’t pay the credit card bill without the change between the sofa cushions.
Clinton had two enviable advantages:
1) The dot-com boom was in full swing. Bill Gates had far more to do with prosperity in the 90s than Bill Clinton ever dreamed of. The huge increase in revenues more than made up for Clinton’s disinclination to trim federal spending
2) Clinton had a GOP-dominated congress, which prevented him from exercising his worst (i.e. most Jim-like) impulses. They certainly weren’t perfect (as we discovered 10 years later, when a GOP president and ideological exhaustion removed whatever restraints on their OWN worst impulses that might have existed), but the adversarial relationship certainly helped.
Translation: Even if Clinton had balanced the budget (he didn’t, but stay with your fantasies Jim), he had far less to do with it than his defenders would have you believe. Given the almost incomprehensible increase in the deficit (and associated debt) since then however, it is hard to believe that even the happy confluence of events in the 90s would be sufficient to permit that level of irresponsibility (much less the far greater levels we see now) to be repeated.
Someone has to explain this to Jim every week.
Clinton also had the advantage of being preceded in office by Reagan / Bush the Elder.
It was in the 1980’s while these Republican presidents held office that most of the technology giants (Apple, Microsoft etc.) of the 1990’s really took off. It’s anyone’s guess what sort of effect higher taxes etc. would have had on these companies early growth but one thing is for sure: it would not have made them bigger, stronger, faster, better companies.
“I’d increase funding for all those things,” says State-humpin’ Jim (his Marvel Comics nickname). Wow–a “liberal” generous with other people’s money! What a shock!
“I remember when ‘liberal’ meant being generous with your own money.”–Will Rogers.
GOP camp should punch back twice as hard, and start a “Free Big Bird” campaign. I’d like to see images of Big Bird locked in his cage sweeping up his mess, while Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and Jim are dressed up ala “The Hunger Games” elite style, living in luxury at the poor birds expense.