Friday, August 31, 2012

Obama and Israel Not On Same Page vis a vis Iran!



From a friend and fellow memo reader in response to my previous  media bias memo: "This is what Marshall McLuhan foresaw in the mid twentieth century!


"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan about 1964 meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

So the reporters have become commentators. I wonder how many people make the distinction? "

I asked my friend what he thought og the Convention and this was his reply;"1- enjoyed every moment

2-Impressions of the speakers and messages [good writers]
    a- classy
    b- diversity in race sex and age
    c-plain factual talk
    d- impression of content is that we can trust these people  to return us to a constitutional republic a government of smaller     size and less intrusion  lower taxes
    e- need more emphasis on the absolute insidious dangers in the spending levels

3- watched mostly PBS to get a feeling of the opposing view.  Gwen Ifill was very uncomfortable almost speechless in face of the republican plain answers to double meaning questions.  Judy Woodruff was remarkable in saying/summarizing  just the exact opposite of what the republicans who appeared  actually said.  Funny in a sick kind of way if not so sad.  Mark Hayes was unintelligible.  The little glimpses I saw of CNN and FOX left me with the impression that the FOX people need to return to being reporters and not performers. CNN  will always spin left ... but their presentation is a heck of a lot more believable becase they adhere to classic newsstyle.  For the most part, FOX production values and style are counterproductive simply because they have become too cute, too chatty and producer centric and appeal to a limited demographic. Do not mistake this comment to describe or criticize the appearance of the FOX newspeople. It is directed to their unprofessional style of reporting the news.

4- Hope Romney and Ryan  will
    a- stay on message keep it positive list of three or four issues and benefits
    b- actually mention - then ignore  the attack ads in their speeches and ridicule them for what they are
    c- need to absolutely ignore OB but speak plainly about the dangerous effects of his legislation this is very important
    d- disavow negative speeches, and media - they connect and rub off on republicans and that is its OB purpose

5- so many great persuasive  clips could be taken from everyones speeches -- an anthology diversity -  of clips especially the women would make a powerful TV and internet campaign. RNC could create a library of clips available to everyone to distribute to their circle of internet friends frequently between now and election."
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More on Steve Oppenheimer's candidacy for Public Commission Seat: "
Steve Oppenheimer For PSC Logo

Dear Dick,

This week we received the results from our first statewide poll!

As we expected, most Georgians are unhappy with the performance of the Public Service Commission and incumbent Commissioner Chuck Eaton.

This is good news for our campaign! But I need your help to put us over the top.

Our objective is to communicate with key voters over the next 68 days and give them the facts:

a) The actions of the Public Service Commission are the reason utility bills are up an average of $350 per year.

b) Incumbent Chuck Eaton has been in office for five years and has missed over 225 days of work and shown up after noon a further 75 days.

c) Chuck Eaton was the deciding vote on the Commission to allow the utility companies to shut off power to elderly and needy customers during heat waves.

Together, we can make history and put the public back in the Georgia Public Service Commission.

Sincerely,
Steve Signature





--
Steve Oppenheimer
Friends of Steve Oppenheimer
Candidate for Public Service Commission - District 3
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Obama, through the current Chief of Staff, has sent a chilling message to Israel (see previous memo). The message is America  is not on the same wave length with Israel, when it comes to Iran.  Obama believes sanctions are working and will produce the desired results.

Israel faces an existential threat, knows unilateral action is not preferable but also does not believe sanctions are working and the recent U.N. report supports their view.

If Israelis look at Syria it is no wonder they are concerned about a president who tells them he has their back.  (.  (See 1 below.)
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Hanson's 'Goose and Gander' thing.  (See 2 below.)
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Only for those with time and patience:  See1 Attached file "ISLAM"
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Dick
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1)Syria: An agenda for action



Every day, Syrian civilians die, not because of the actions we have taken, but because of the actions we have not taken.


By IRWIN COTLER


 The grisly reports of the latest Syrian mass atrocity in Darayya reflect the all too horrific Syrian depravity pattern: First, laying siege to the city – denying its inhabitants food, water, electricity, medical assistance and communications of any kind; second, launching a sustained, intensified and indiscriminate air, tank and artillery bombardment; third, maintaining the siege by surrounding and entering the city with tanks, troop carriers, heavy weapons, soldiers and militias – threatening to “cleanse” the city – while not allowing any of its inhabitants to leave; finally, shabiha – government killer militias – going house-to-house, engaging in wanton executions, killing whole families, even burning bodies so as to cover up the extent of the horror, only to exacerbate it. 


It is a depravity that has been repeated many times since the “peace and dignity” march in Deraa in March 2011 – the largest single-day massacre with 400 murdered in one day in Darayya alone – while the killing continues in Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Idlib and other Syrian cities, with the magnitude of Syrian mass atrocities as yet unknown.

In Libya, the international community intervened when there was a threat of impending mass atrocity; in Syria, the international community has yet to intervene, despite the recurring mass atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In Libya, the UN Security Council authorized intervention to protect the threatened civilian community; in Syria, the Security Council has yet to adopt one resolution – even to implement the UN-Annan plan – despite the 18 months of killing fields, where more than 20,000 Syrians have now been murdered.

In Libya, the Security Council invoked the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine – the international law principle authorizing international collective action “to protect [a state’s] population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” if the state where these crimes are being committed is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens – or worse, as in the case of Syria, it is the author of such crimes. In Syria, it is as if this principle had never been adopted by the international community, let alone the obligation to implement it.

I have been writing for over a year now of the need to affirm and implement the Responsibility to Protect doctrine to help save Syrian civilians being massacred by the Assad regime, or to initiate the requisite protection action, even without invoking the R2P doctrine. Yet, the riposte to these calls – by myself and others – for a more proactive, protective and interventionist approach has been to warn of “civil war”; of enhanced sectarian strife; of an influx of jihadists; of incessant killings – all of which have happened.

Indeed, everything that was predicted would happen as a result of international action has in fact resulted – but from international inaction.

What is so necessary now – if these dire warnings are not to assume the mantra of a self-fulfilling prophecy – is for the United States, in concert with the EU, the Arab League, Turkey, Canada and other “Friends of Syria” to move to implement the following measures with all deliberate speed: First, protection against the threat of weapons of mass destruction; the disclosure that there are some 45 chemical weapons facilities and tons of chemical weapons materials scattered throughout Syria, coupled with the declaration that the regime is prepared to use them against “external terrorist threats” is fraught with dangers, particularly as the regime refers to the rebels as “terrorists” who have foreign backing, let alone the transfer of these weapons to Hezbollah or their seizure by jihadists. It is to be hoped that the US, Russia and others can at least cooperate in protecting against this deadly threat.

Second, it is necessary to interdict and sanction the substantial Iranian and Hezbollah military assistance to the Syrian regime – particularly Iranian arms shipments and Iranian training, financing and arming of Syrian forces and militias – which are in standing violation of existing UN Security Council resolutions. Simply put, countries, entities, groups and individuals involved in such transactions and activities must be severely sanctioned and punished, while Hezbollah – given its complicity in international terror as well as atrocities in Syria – should finally be listed by the European Union as a terrorist entity.

It should be noted that the just-released annual US State Department Country Reports on Terrorism again referred to Iran as the world’s “leading state sponsor of terrorism,” while adding that it “continues to undermine international efforts to promote peace and democracy and threatens stability” – as in Syria – and has “provided significant quantities of weaponry and funding to Hezbollah in direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.”

Third, enhanced support for the besieged opposition: All the opposition forces, from the Syrian National Council to the Free Syrian Army, are united in their request for international intervention and support to help “level the playing field,” including food, fuel and medical supplies; defensive weaponry; command and control assistance; and logistical and communications aid, training and other forms of support, which is only now, belatedly, beginning to be supplied. These efforts must be coordinated to ensure effectiveness – including the vetting of the recipients of such defensive weapons to ensure that they do not fall into the wrong hands. Indeed, the establishment of a unified US-Turkish task force for information sharing and operational planning is a welcome development, while the just-announced French initiative may move us closer to this objective.

Fourth, safe havens must be established. Aleppo is experiencing a humanitarian disaster. The combination of incessant and intensifying aerial bombardment of civilian neighborhoods – already subjected to weeks of artillery, tank and helicopter gunship bombardment – coupled with the absence of electricity, water, food and medical assistance – has generated a frightening humanitarian storm. It is crucial that safe havens be established that serve as civilian protection zones; as refuge for the displaced and assaulted; and as humanitarian corridors for the delivery of medical and humanitarian relief.

Fifth, such safe havens, which are necessary for Aleppo, are no less crucial for Syria as a whole. Indeed, I have been writing for close to a year of the need for civilian protection zones – or what Anne-Marie Slaughter called “no-kill zones” – particularly along Syria’s borders with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. This would protect against the vulnerability of the assaulted Syrian neighborhoods, while providing the desperately needed protection for displaced persons and refugees. Any Syrian assault on these civilian protection zones would authorize legitimate self-defense protection – including no-fly zones – which would protect against Syrian forces attacking these civilian areas.

Sixth, it is necessary that the United States – together with Arab, Turkish, European and other allies – works to unify the patchwork Syrian opposition, where the Free Syrian Army operates more as a network of militias than a unified command, and help plan an orderly transition on the road to, and in the wake of, Bashar Assad’s demise.

There will be the pressing challenge of rebuilding lives; rehabilitating the displaced; repatriating refugees; restarting the economy; restoring services; and protecting human security. As well, there is the need to combat the hundreds of jihadist and al-Qaida fighters – particularly from Iraq – who are in Syria.

Seventh, the Syrian political and army leadership must be put on notice that they will be held accountable for their grave violations of international law, and that they will be brought to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity, which may lessen further Syrian criminality while encouraging more defections.

It is now as timely as it is necessary to increase pressure on Assad, and those loyal to him, to seek exile lest they suffer the fate of a Muammar Gaddafi or a Saddam Hussein.

Indeed, military commanders should be urged to defect – as should high-level political leaders – who should feel encouraged by recent high-level defections such as that of Syrian Prime Minister Ryad Hijab, brigadier-generals such as Manaf Tlass, and senior diplomats, which has emboldened the opposition no less than it has jolted the Syrian regime.

Eighth, the international community must protect against the risk of rising sectarian violence, jihadist radicalization, and reprisal and revenge killings, by securing firm commitments from Syrian opposition forces to address these phenomena seriously while protecting the rights of minorities; assistance to rebel commanders should be conditioned on such undertakings.

Ninth, there needs to be the mandated deployment of a large international Arab-led peace protection force in Syria that will, inter alia, order troops and tanks back to barracks and bases; order and monitor compliance with the cessation of violence; and help secure the peaceful transition to a post-Assad regime.

Tenth, there is a clear and compelling need for enhanced humanitarian assistance arising from the exponential increase in internally displaced people within Syria, which has doubled since March to now number more than 1.5 million persons displaced and over one million in need of assistance, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have flowed – and continue to flow – into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, with the attending risk of the destabilization of these border regions. The announcements of increased humanitarian assistance by Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are but steps in the right direction, which should be replicated by other “Friends of Syria.”

Again, as others have put it, “Loss of time means loss of lives.” The time to act is now, and it is long past. Every day, Syrian civilians die, not because of the actions we have taken, but because of the actions we have not taken.


Irwin Cotler is a professor of law (emeritus) at McGill University and former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada. He is the co-editor of 
The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in our Time, a recent publication of Oxford University Press.
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Virtually every left-wing attack on Bush can legitimately be turned against Obama.
By Victor Davis Hanson


It could not last — the attendee of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church sermonizing on tolerance; the practitioner of Chicago politics lecturing on civility; the most partisan voting record in the Senate as proof of a new promised bipartisanship; earlier books and speeches calling for hard-core progressivism as evidence of a no-more-red-state-blue-state conciliation. And in fact the disconnect did not last, and Barack Obama finds himself dealing with assorted chickens coming home to roost.

In the summer of 2004, Michael Moore released a crude propaganda film, Fahrenheit 9/11, full of distortions and half-truths, and yet passed off as a documentary — all designed to help swing the election to Democratic challenger John Kerry. Hollywood, the media, and the Left in general did not worry about the film’s inaccuracies or the mythology that the infomercial was a disinterested documentary. Instead, liberals deified Moore. Indeed, he was an honored guest at the Democratic Convention, and liberal luminaries paid him obeisance at various showings of the film.

The goddess Nemesis took note, and this year Dinesh D’Souza and John Sullivan followed Moore’s model. The result is a blockbuster “documentary,” 2016: Obama’sAmerica, that does more to Barack Obama than Michael Moore once did to George W. Bush. The Left is perturbed, unappreciative that its own methods and objectives have been turned against itself, and in a more sophisticated and far more effective manner than Moore’s buffoonery.

The Left in the era of Barack Obama established other ends-justify-the-means precedents. In 2008, Obama surmised that no one else would ever raise the sorts of gigantic sums that he was then amassing (in toto nearly $800 million, more than twice the amount raised by John McCain), and so was the first candidate to renounce public financing of a presidential campaign in the general election since the law was passed. But, of course, Obama never imagined that four years later his approval ratings would be less than 50 percent, or that he would be running against a financier who could match his efforts dollar for dollar.

Nor did Obama think that a mesmerized Wall Street, from which he raised more cash than any prior candidate, would object all that much to his populist boilerplate against “1 percenters,” “fat-cat bankers,” and owners of “corporate jets.” So now what exactly will he do? Appeal to Romney to abide by public-financing rules? Blast Romney for raising too much money? Damn Romney for courting Wall Street?

Beneath the folksy veneer and the serial calls for “civility,” Obama proved vicious in his denunciations of George Bush, at one point calling him “unpatriotic” for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over eight years. Obama offered two general arguments: that the chief executive is solely responsible for economic hard times, and that four years is easily long enough to right the ship. Obama scoffed at the Bush defense that politically driven interventions by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — hand in glove with congressional overseers — had distorted the real-estate market and contributed to the subprime-mortgage collapse, which destroyed an otherwise strong economy.

Obama boasted further that he would cut the deficit by half during his first term, and asserted that he would rather be a successful president than a two-term one. And he added that he should not be reelected if the economy was not restored to health. Apparently Obama assumed that after every recession (this one ended in June 2009) there is a natural recovery, the latter all the more robust when the former is severe. For all the right-wing scare talk about Obamacare, federal takeovers, more taxes, and too many regulations, Obama also took for granted that the cry-wolf private sector would bounce back — no matter how much his policies threatened it — and would almost magically continue to make so much money that an ever-growing government could redistribute ever more of it.

Yet now Romney is echoing Obama’s exact arguments: Yes, the chief executive is responsible for things like 43 months of 8 percent–plus unemployment, $5 trillion in new debt, and anemic GDP growth; and, yes, if things do not improve after four years, then it is time to change the president.

Obama established a wink-and-nod type of negative attack. As he called in sonorous tones for hope and change and a new civility, he negatively stereotyped a stunning cross-section of Americans: The white working class became “clingers,” the police “stereotype” minorities and act “stupidly,” small-business owners “didn’t build” their own businesses, doctors lop off limbs and yank out tonsils, bankers are “fat cats” — apparently on the premise that such groups would never take all this invective seriously. At various times Mitt Romney has been reduced to a dastardly financial pirate, a killer of innocent cancer victims, a veritable racist, and now a misogynist. After the class-warfare card and the race card, we await only Obama’s use of the Mormon card. Yet the polls remain roughly even, and Obama is about to be the target of a no-holds-barred assault fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars. Ethically speaking, what possible Romney sin might Obama object to? That super-PAC ads are unfair? That Romney has gone negative? That Romney stereotypes entire groups? That Romney’s inner staff are ethically compromised? This, after Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, was paid $100,000 for two speeches in Nigeria in December 2010, to a company that was eager for influence and whose affiliates did business with an embargoed Iran; Plouffe made the trip to Nigeria about a month before he joined the administration as a senior adviser. Just this month, deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on national television asserted something demonstrably false — that she did not know the facts about the woman Mitt Romney supposedly caused to die of cancer.
During the Bush administration, the Left established another caricature: the gaffe-prone, golf-playing elitist George Bush. Did they ever imagine that they were ensuring like caricature for the leftist academic Barack Obama, who quite unexpectedly would play golf four times more often in four years than Bush did in eight years? Or that for every Bushism there would be a “corpse-man”? Or that the small ranch house in Crawford, Texas, would be trumped by First Family jaunts to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Aspen? I would like to think a slip like “57 states” is just a slip, or that golf is valuable presidential relaxation, but I was taught by the Left that such garbled speech is a window into a confused mind, and that presidential golf is elite recreation that betrays class privilege.

In 2008, there was a lot of sloganeering on energy policy. Obama assured us that we could “not drill” our way out of a spike in gas prices. “Millions of new green jobs” was heard at almost every rally, along with shouts about wind and solar this and that. In less guarded moments, Obama assured us that he would pass cap-and-trade legislation, “bankrupt” coal companies, and allow coal-based energy prices to “skyrocket.” These were the heady days of “peak oil” and the liberal attack against “oil men in the White House” — on the eve of the Chevy Volt and breakthrough new companies with names like Solyndra.

At the very time when well-connected crony capitalists were squandering hundreds of millions of dollars in federal wind and solar subsidies, a quiet private-sector revolution in horizontal drilling and fracking vastly expanded America’s gas and oil reserves — despite, not because of, Obama’s energy policies. The paradox finally become so absurd that Obama was reduced to bragging that the United States was producing more gas and oil under his watch than ever before, apparently on the logic that oil men were so adept that they could find vast amounts of new sources of energy on private lands without worrying about the Obama administration’s efforts to virtually cut off all new leasing on federal lands. The result is that our first green president is facing $4-a-gallon gas while he brags that what he tried to stop proved unstoppable.

Nemesis, remember, is not just karma, but payback with an absurd twist.
 NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institutionand the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.
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Have Tectonic Plates of Politics Begun Shifting?





SKIDAWAY ISLAND REPUBLICAN CLUB
True Perspectives Series
Saturday, September 8, 8:00 A.M., Plantation
A Full Buffet Breakfast plus a Huge Helping of

The Economic Issues for November

Presented by: Patrick Fleming
Caldwell & Orkin, financial services, Atlanta

The Economy will be the deciding issue on November 6

Mr. Fleming will cover all aspects of the issue –
Current macro-economic analysis
Fed policy in an era of “0 %” rates
How the election may impact the markets and vice versa
The “Fiscal Cliff”
and
A few ideas for personal investing in this environment
 (Don’t forget the delicious buffet)

Make your reservations now!
Just $10, members and non-members, all welcome
PLEASE RSVP: Jack Kaster, 598-7714 or kasjac@bellsouth.net
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Remember this beautiful face because it is the one of the future Republican Party.

Just as I predict a Romney - Ryan victory, I believe the tectonic plates of politics are shifting as the Republican Party and Conservatism will begin to garner wider support. The RNC convention was a marvelous show case of the depth and breadth  of their awesome bench.

The Democrats have a tired, faded and angry look as best evidenced by the visage of  Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Give me the image and thinking  of Rubio, Portman, Pawlenty, West and Christie any day. (See 1 below.)
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VOTING IN CHICAGO :



My father was a staunch conservative
and voted straight ticket Republican until the day he died.
Now, he votes Democrat.

The most critical issue now facing Romney is voter theft and fraud on the part of Obamaites.  I would not put anything past them.
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Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Column: Artur Davis and the crucial role of party switchers


(The views expressed are the author's own and not those of Reuters.)
Former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, who delivered a nominating speech for President Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, discusses his support of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as he addresses the second session of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, August 28, 2012 REUTERS/Mike Segar 
TAMPA, Florida - If you've been watching the Republican National Convention at home, you probably missed the speech former Representative Artur Davis of Alabama gave on Tuesday night. Sandwiched between Ted Cruz, the Tea Party darling who won an impressive come-from-behind victory in Texas's GOP Senate primary, and Nikki Haley, the strikingly youthful Indian-American governor of South Carolina, Davis was overshadowed in most of the media coverage. MSNBC decided not to air Davis's speech at all, which was a noteworthy omission given that Davis had cut his political teeth as a Democrat and indeed as an enthusiastic early backer of President Obama.

But on a star-studded night, before hotly anticipated speeches by Ann Romney and conservative action hero Chris Christie, it was Davis who gave the most effective performance. It was so effective, in fact, that I heard many of the assembled participants speculate about which office he'd run for next.

Party switchers are a staple at these quadrennial affairs. They dramatize the case against the opposition by offering dispatches from within the belly of the beast and signal that it's safe for voters to forswear their old allegiances. And so they serve the double function of rallying the base and wooing the center.
Perhaps the most notable party switcher in recent memory was Zell Miller, the then-U.S. senator and former governor of Georgia, who gave a spellbindingly zealous speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Having once been the centrist Democrat par excellence, practically inventing Bill Clinton's Third Way playbook, Miller let loose a torrent of rage at Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry that delighted rock-ribbed conservatives everywhere -- and may well have frightened small children.
Miller's fiery address foreshadowed the results of the 2004 election. White southerners, many of whom had retained some vestigial loyalty to the Democratic party of their forefathers, flocked to George W. Bush and the GOP, which helped the party make significant gains in the U.S. Senate. This consolidation of the South has had a deep and profound impact on our politics, in part by sparking an equal and opposite reaction that has driven much of coastal urban America into the arms of the Democrats.
Which is why Democrats have had their own bumper crop of party switchers. This year they've pulled off a coup by including Charlie Crist, the ex-Republican former Florida governor once known as "Chain Gang Charlie" for his draconian law-and-order enthusiasms, on their roster of speakers for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. It's almost as though the Democrats took a look at Artur Davis and said, we'll see you your congressman and raise you a governor.
Among the cynical journos whose tweets I had the distinct displeasure of reading that night, there was a derisive, sneering tone toward Davis, with many observing that the former Alabama congressman, an African American raised by a single mother, was unlikely to sway black voters.
What the critics failed to understand is that Davis's address, unlike Zell Miller's, was not about making an ethnic or regional appeal. Rather, he served as a stand-in for a kind of upwardly mobile, aspirational voter you'll find in many American communities. Davis was raised in humble circumstances in West Montgomery, Alabama. But he also attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he proved an academic success. He later returned to Alabama to serve as a prosecutor. In those years, he embraced the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, and in particular the pragmatic centrism of Bill Clinton. Unlike most elite-educated professionals of his vintage, he didn't embrace a hard-edged social liberalism. He tried to find ways to reconcile left and right and white and black, and he saw Clinton's message of hope, growth and opportunity as the right way to do it.
Now, however, having served as a Democrat in Congress under President Obama, and having lost a bruising, ideologically charged Democratic gubernatorial primary in his home state, Davis has changed teams. Not surprisingly, his erstwhile allies have been notably unkind. Once feted as the new face of black Democratic politics and as the "Alabama Obama," various fair-weather friends have condemned him as an opportunist.
The simple truth is that as the Obama years wore on, Davis found himself agreeing more and more with right-of-center figures like Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Their tough-minded, whatever-works pragmatism resonated with his experiences, while the Obama administration's highly ideological approach did not. Davis anticipates, in his words, "the rise of a reform-oriented center-right that is bent on restoring accountability and market principles to public systems" over the next decade.
The really interesting question about Davis's political future is whether the GOP will become the party of Daniels and Christie and Jeb Bush or, as its critics allege, something narrower, angrier and more ideological. Davis has made it clear that he believes conservatives should seek to reform and improve government as well as contain its growth. This is a conviction widely shared among real-world Republicans. Yet apart from the aforementioned governors, all of whom have their idiosyncrasies, it has few convincing champions in the Republican political class, least of all in Congress.
If Mitt Romney is elected president, he will have a brief window of opportunity to seize this ground and to make the GOP the party of reform, aspiration and inclusiveness. If he pulls that off, Artur Davis will be the harbinger of a much bigger, more consequential shift.
(Reihan Salam is a Reuters columnist, and lead blogger for National Review online's "The Agenda." He is co-author with Ross Douthat of the 2008 book Grand New Party.)


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Last Night Made My Day!

My son responded to my media bias memo and expresses his thoughts regarding Romney's address and the ending program of the RNC: "I think Dolan, giving the closing benediction is the biggest statement of the night.  Romney gave a good speech too.  The “lower the waters and heal the planet…I just want to help your family” is the line that will win this campaign if any can."

My response back regarding Romney's address: " For what it is worth I thought Romney's address was solid as is the man. Yes, he was willing to leave the soaring rhetoric to the current president who walks on water.

If I have any concern it is the 'marker' Romney laid down about creating 12 million jobs. It might not become the "Read my lips" or " Weapons of mass destruction" tag line  but it can be used as a weapon against him by the biased media should he fall short.  Furthermore, it could  provide a basis for debating where to draw the starting line on employment. Never give nourishment to the nit pickers.

Otherwise, it was the speech Romney needed to make and the nation needed to hear. It was not the speech the Obamaites will find enjoyable." 

Last night made my day!(See 1 and 1a below.)
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Has America's top General become a gutless weasel  completely obeisant to Obama?  You decide.  (See 2 below.)
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To prove that Obama's Press Secretary, Jay Carney, has his head on his shoulders read below.(See 3 below.)
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Romney makes a  straight talk case according to John Podhoretz.  (See 4 below.)
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I believe the RNC did what it had to do in terms of portraying Obama and his failed presidency.  Now on to the debates and then the election.

I do not know what the Democrats have planned for us next week  but I believe their Convention will be testier, more a parade of ideologues and mal-contents from every walk of life and Obama will look a lot smaller even if he flanks himself with more and bigger Roman Columns.

As for 'Ole Bill's'  Key Note Address, he had to be driven more by ego to have accepted the invitation because this is not his Party.  They have  lurched too far to the Left even for his taste.  Stay tuned.
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Dick
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1)

The Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racial Code Words

Thumper the Rabbit's parents always taught him, "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all." If the left's self-appointed Omniscient Diviners of True Meaning have their way, conservatives in the public square won't be left with anything at all to say. Ever.
It's a treacherous business exercising your freedom of speech in the age of Obama. As a public service, I present to you: "The 2012 Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racial Code Words." Decoder rings, activate!
--Angry. On the campaign trail this summer, President Obama has become -- in the words of the mainstream Associated Press -- more "aggressive." But don't you dare call him "angry." According to MSNBC host Toure, that's racist!
"You notice he said 'anger' twice," Toure fumed in response to a speech last week by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. "He's really trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man." Or maybe Romney is just accurately describing the singular temperament of the growling, finger-jabbing, failure-plagued demagogue-in-chief. It's about the past four years, not 400 years. Sheesh.
--Chicago. The Obamas and their core team of astroturfers, pay-for-play schemers and powerbrokers hail from the Windy City. This is a simple geographic fact. But in progressive of pallor Chris Matthews' world, it's an insidious dog whistle. The frothing cable TV host attacked Republicans this week who have the gall to remind voters of the ruthless Chicago way.
"(T)hey keep saying Chicago, by the way. Have you noticed?" Matthews sputtered. "That sends that message: This guy's helping the poor people in the bad neighborhoods and screwing us in the 'burbs."
Actually, it's a pointed reminder that the radical redistribution politics of Chicago-on-the-Potomac have done little to alleviate the suffering of impoverished Americans in violence-plagued, job-hungry inner cities everywhere. Racist!
--Constitution. Fox News contributor Juan Williams, who proudly calls himself a "real reporter," has apparently added real telepathist to his curriculum vitae. Earlier this year, he read the minds of Republicans and conservatives whom he accuses of deep-seated bigotry when they show any public reverence for our founding principles, documents and leaders.
"The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message," Williams wrote. "References to a lack of respect for the 'Founding Fathers' and the 'Constitution' also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core 'old-fashioned American values.'"
So, if you ever find yourself wanting to hum the "Schoolhouse Rock" version of the Preamble, heed these three words: Stop the hate!
--Experienced. A significant population of American voters believes that qualifications actually matter when running for the highest office in the land. Chilling, isn't it? They might as well sport KKK hoods. In the judgment of one Basil Smikle of The Century Foundation, "experienced" is a dreaded "racial code word."
Intoned Smikle: "Experienced? Does it really mean the time that he spent in the Senate, or does it mean, 'Well, does that guy have the same kind of experience in life that I have?' ... What does inexperience really mean?"
Maybe it just means what critics meant it to mean: "Does this guy have experience beyond the measly 304 days he served when the U.S. Senate was in session before he announced his first presidential bid?" I know: Racist!
--Food Stamp President. At the dawn of the modern federal food stamp program, one in 50 Americans was enrolled. This year, one in seven Americans is on the food stamp rolls. The majority of them are white. Obama's loosening of eligibility requirements combined with the stagnant economy fueled the rise in dependency. "Food stamp president" is pithy shorthand for the very real entitlement explosion.
Democrats fumed when former GOP candidate Newt Gingrich bestowed the title on Obama and decried its purportedly racist implications. But who are the racists? As Gingrich scolded the aforementioned race troll Chris Matthews last week: "Why do you assume food stamp refers to blacks? What kind of racist thinking do you have? You're being a racist because you assume they're black!" Time to find a new code word.
--Golf. This one's a gobsmacker. Beltway barnacle Lawrence O'Donnell appeared on cable TV to decry Republicans who mention Obama's frequent golf outings. He singled out Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's convention speech Wednesday night, which joked that Obama "was working to earn a spot on the PGA tour." The warped racial radar of pasty Lawrence O interpreted this golf joke as "Obama equals Tiger Woods equals RACISM."
Huh? "These people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches." O'Donnell expertly explained. "Things are getting lower and lower by the day," host Martin Bashir agreed.
I'd say this is all Greek to me. But that's probably racist, too.
--Holding down the fort. Obama's State Department diversity officer now advises us, based on admittedly dubious history, that "holding down the fort" is an anti-Native American idiom that has no place in U.S. discourse. Example: "I know you guys have been holding down the fort." Oops, that was Obama at a Tampa rally in 2008. Next...
--Kitchen cabinet. Radio talk-show host Mark Thompson jumped on Romney for using this phrase -- coined to describe Andrew Jackson's administration in the 1800s -- at the NAACP convention in July. Romney was referring to a close member of his staff during his tenure as Massachusetts governor.
"To talk about being in the kitchen and not talk about an African-American actually being in your cabinet is really not a good metaphor to use with African-Americans," Thompson blasted. Is it racist to ask: Huh?
--Obamacare. Left-wing Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky accused Romney of "race-baiting" by wielding the term "Obamacare." The Beltway shorthand for this behemoth federal spending program exposes Romney as a "spineless, disingenuous, supercilious, race-mongering pyromaniac" because it is a "heavily loaded word," Tomasky railed.
How then to explain the use of the Bull Connor-channeling epithet by none other than the Obama campaign, which peddles "I like Obamacare" T-shirts on its website? Logic is racist.
--Privileged. Stay with me here. Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart has a problem with Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry calling Obama "privileged." Spotlighting his elite education is tantamount to racial bigotry because it insinuates that "he took the place of someone else through affirmative action, that someone else being someone white."
And here I thought it was a simple description of an out-of-touch academic whose crony Chicago ties of all colors gifted him with access, money and power that the vast majority of Americans don't have.
--Professor. Several progressive black intellectuals excoriated 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for this statement: "They know we're at war, and to win that war we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern."
"Professor," professor Charles Ogletree said, was code for "uppity." This translation service is available only to credentialed Ivy League eggheads. A saner criticism would be that Obama was never a professor of law, but an untenured lecturer. Racist? Tell that to Hillary Clinton, whose 2008 campaign made that very point.
--You people. Asked last month whether her husband would release more tax returns, Ann Romney told a pack of reporters: "We've given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and about how, you know, how we live our life."
A chorus of faux-ragers from the Huffington Post to NBC's Andrea Mitchell hammered Mrs. Romney for her double-whammy sandwich of elitism and racism. Apparently, "you people" is the verbal equivalent of putting black people back in chains. One little, teeny-tiny problem: ABC News admitted: "Our ruling after reviewing the original audio is that she did not include the 'you.'"
In other words, it was manufactured out of whole cloth. Give the dog-trombone media another black mark for ridiculous bias denial. "Black mark"? I know: Raaaaaaaaaaacist!


1a)The Problem with Barack
By William L. Gensert


The problem with our inchoate president is not his policies.  Throughout history, pseudo-centrist socialists, peddling feel-good, free-lunch crap, while millions of minions worship their messiah's brilliance...have often sought to dominate the discussion. 
Yet this man seriously seems to believe he is a king, free to pick and choose the laws and statutes he will obey or enforce, duly empowered to impel or forbid action by executive decree, without legislative approval.
America is a republic.  We elect representatives to do our bidding, to govern with the consent of the governed.  We have a Constitution, which sets plainly the rules by which the branches of government interact and act on issues of importance, as well as the anomalies of the day. 
Barack Obama may be the executive -- in a federal system comprising three equal branches of government: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial -- but he is not an emperor.  He cannot make law.  Or at least, he is not empowered by the Constitution to do so. 
Despite having once taught constitutional law, Obama seems not to understand this.  Or perhaps he doesn't care, having fallen victim to a common problem often seen in athletes but also prevalent among those in power.  They become convinced that they are bigger than the game -- that it's all about them.  Hubris, solipsism, whatever it can be called -- the result is the same: a big man aspiring to big things. 
The beauty of the U.S. Constitution is that much like capitalism itself, it is an exercise in the adversarial pursuit of self-interest to accomplish goals.  In the private sector, the goal is profit -- in government, the goal is supposed to be successful governance, but usually it degenerates into the accumulation of power. 
Capitalism is a system where the entirety of humanity is raised by individuals pursuing their best interests, creating opportunities and synergies that reverberate throughout society.  Pursuit of profit actually creates a better world.  Gordon Gekko was right: greed is good. 
The United States' form of self-governance divides power among coequal branches -- they are adversarial and imbued with self-interested hunger for control, because the lure of power is greater than the longing for love or money for many. 
Each branch of government works to and for its own interests, guarding power and prerogatives with each and every action.  The system is not designed to make it easy to get things done.  It is designed to make it difficult.  You need to reach consensus.  You need to pursue agreement. 
Every president has understood this -- well, except for Barack Obama, who thinks it is so unfair that others will not do as they are told -- and that he is restricted in deciding what that is.  Free men can suffer and survive almost any indignity or evil, yet for three and a half years, we have been defenseless against the "one's" good intentions -- for he has shown himself willing to destroy the nation for its own sake.   
You see, just because something has worked for hundreds of years doesn't mean it's good enough for a man as great as our president.   
History is littered with great men of good intention, much larger than life, convinced that only they could save humanity in general, despite never having saved anyone in particular -- transcendent figures, trying in earnest to transform the world in their own image
It's easy imagining Barack at night, after he has brushed his teeth, in the White House bathroom, staring at his own reflection and asking, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the greatest man of all?" 
Even after acknowledging that a great deal of Obama's greatness is self-perceived, nonexistent, or a function of the meandering musings of minions and sycophants, it is obvious that our president absolutely knows he can solve all the world's ills, if only people would do as he tells them they must.  It's easy for a man to convince himself that he is great; it is almost impossible to persuade him that he is not. 
He may have no plan, or any idea how to proceed in a second term -- except for giving America more of the same disastrous policies from his first term.  Yet...he can't wait, and just as the imperative of "publish or perish" was too great for the great man when he pretended to be a professor, the intricacies and constraints of the Constitution are too difficult for him when he pretends to be president.  He may prefer the golf and parties, but he must push forward, to a future built to last. 
Executive orders and rule by regulatory fiat suit him just fine -- no down and dirty work involved, and it doesn't delay tee-time.  Perhaps, as Mitch McConnell suggested, he would be better-suited to running for the presidency of the PGA.
Yet he is still nothing more than a small man -- so afraid people will see -- a man loath to allow those who would dare the freedom to do what they have always been free to do -- pre-Barack, of course.  He knows better, because after all, he knows best.  It's always the pretentiously petite and the intellectually bankrupt who scream the loudest and profess to have all the ideas -- just don't ask them what those ideas are. 
A realization of reality, a lack of self-confidence, a metaphorical mirror affording him the opportunity to see who he really is, has manifested itself in the manifold narcissism we see in our child king today -- for he is nothing, if not our savior.  He understands nothing -- he sees nothing.  It's about him.  It's always been about him, despite what he says.  We are merely pawns in his quest to be recognized as the greatest man to have ever lived -- the one.  The oceans will cease to rise, and the planet will begin to heal, because they must...
Media has been codependent in this most extreme of hoaxes.  They have accepted Barack Obama as their lord and savior, and they can't walk it back now.  He is their man, and as such, whatever he does will be brilliant and transformational, even when he says stupid things like "you didn't build that" and "the private sector is doing fine."  The story becomes about how he didn't mean what he said, and if people were just a little smarter, they would know that.  He is, after all, all about nuance -- little people don't get nuance.
To those still not smitten, in the end, the depredations, degradations, and depravities inherent in denying the primacy of the one, are better than the indignity our self-respect would suffer for pretending to believe in him.  A false god is a false god, no matter his handicap or how well he reads from a teleprompter. 
In the end, the truth shines through.  History will note that the greatest triumph of Barack Obama will always be that he once convinced a majority of people that he was real.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Gen. Martin Dempsey   Israel   Iran nuclear   IAEA   Binyamin Netanyahu 
US Gen. Martin Dempsey meets PM Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
US Gen. Martin Dempsey meets PM Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

In its bluntest message yet, the US administration under Barack Obama, declared that Israel is on its own if it decides to go for Iran’s nuclear program with a military operation.  Thursday, Aug. 30, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered the view for the third time in as many weeks that an Israeli attack would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program.”
But this time, talking to journalists in London, he added impatiently: “I don't want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it."

Dempsey then astonished his audience by saying he did not know Iran's nuclear intentions, “as intelligence did not reveal intentions.” What was clear, he said, was that the "international coalition" applying pressure on Iran "could be undone if [Iran] was attacked prematurely."
Sanctions against Iran were having an effect, he said, and they should be given a reasonable opportunity to succeed.
The general’s timing on this assertion was unfortunate. As he spoke, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported a 31-percent jump in Iran’s 20 percent enriched uranium to 189.4 kilograms from 145 in May.
It was therefore obvious to the world that Iran has not been deflected by sanctions one whit from its gallop towards a nuclear weapon capacity, a race that will continue so long as nothing effective is done to stop – or even delay - its progress.
The mistimed Dempsey remarks are the clearest sign yet that President Obama is fed up with hearing about Iran and its nuclear aspirations. He wants to be left alone to make his own judgments and decisions on the intelligence put before him – even though he might be too slow to stop Iran becoming a nuclear-armed power.
Israel, which is in direct line of an explicit Iranian threat of destruction, was therefore publicly slapped down by its best friend. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their predecessors were shown to have wasted three years in tireless efforts to solve the Iranian nuclear peril in accord with that friend. Washington has just dumped them.

Unless Gen. Dempsey spoke off the cuff (unlikely), he would certainly have been obeying a White House directive – even if Washington later issues a softening remark. That directive may have been prompted by information that Israel is on the point of attacking Iran, which Obama would seek to head off.
The latest IAEA quarterly report published Thursday must have seriously embarrassed the Obama administration by making nonsense of its dependence on diplomacy and sanctions.The top US soldier may have been deployed for an authorative answer.
But Iran’s leaders must be laughing up their sleeves at America’s futile efforts to isolate them, as they race toward their nuclear goal while showcasing Tehran as the stage for the Non-Aligned Summit attended by dozens of world leaders.  
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3)Jay Carney, White House Press Jester and His Pack of Fools


Obama promises that finally, the secret that all America has been waiting for from the White House will be released shortly.

“It will be out soon,” Today.com quotes the president as promising this week in a chat session on Reddit.
No, it’s not the Fast and Furious documents.
No, it’s not Obama’s college transcripts.
Nor even a federal budget that might garner, say, one (1) vote in either chamber of Congress.
No; instead the president continues to treat the country to a reality tour that trivializes the presidency, cheapens the office and makes the White House, perhaps, the most overvalued home since the Obamas’ shady real estate deal with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko.
“I can tell you from first hand experience, it is tasty,” explained president Irrelevant about the secret documents.
You see, president Distraction’s folks have launched a petition for the White House to release the national beer recipe.
Yep.
Jay Carney, the White House Press Jester has tweeted about it- all while being paid by your tax dollars.
Gee, I wonder just why that economic plan isn’t working?
Yes; THAT plan.
The plan with the motto: “Jobs? Jobs? Let them drink beer.”
The petition, which really and truly is hosted on the White House web site, needs 25,000 signatures to go public. So far, 11,860 people have signed the petition. The signature requires you to give theWhiteHouse.gov your first and last name, your email and your zip code.
The president does promise that he “will not disclose, sell, rent, or exchange the email address you use to create your account to individuals or organizations outside the Executive Office of the President.”
Well thank goodness for that.
Hey wait: Define “outside the Executive Office of the President.”
Nothing says transparency like the light amber bubbles of a White House Honey Ale.
This explains the unexplainable award the White House got two years ago for transparency, the ceremony for which the press was not invited.
The award was for a secret, White House lite beer.
Here’s an item the clowns in the White House might have missed while they were clowning around for the Cooking Channel:
Unemployment claims still are hovering in recession territory at 374,000 new initial claims for the week, while last week‘s claims were once again revised upward.
And the sucking sound you hear in the economy is largely due to POLITICAL problems not economic ones.
It’s really impossible to overstate the responsibility the carnies (pun intended) in the White House share for the poor performance of the economy.
“When people get nervous about the macroeconomic environment, they slow down spending,” William Sullivan, president and chief executive officer of Agilent Technologies Inc. told Bloomberg.
“It’s not supply and demand. It’s not a normal recession,” Sullivan said on an August 15 earnings call, also per Bloomberg. “Given the issues of the euro and what’s going to happen and then you have this financial cliff in the U.S. in January, complete political disagreement in Washington, people are really nervous.”
Not a normal recession; an Obama recession. Nerves, disagreement, fiscal cliffs, all the stuff that a House of Horrors is made up of.  
“If somebody agreed tomorrow to say that Europe is going to do a euro bond and the U.S. was not going to have a financial cliff in January, you would have a different outlook,” Sullivan said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Nothing’s that simple while the Obama carnival occupies the White House.
Even the release of a beer recipe takes work. Of course, work without adding any jobs.
Because adding jobs would just be way too foolish for this pack of fools.   
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4)Mitt’s plain pitch

Straight appeal to swing voters

By John Podhoretz


Mitt Romney did last night what the Republican Convention did all week: He made a potent case to those voters who haven’t yet made their minds up that he’s worthy of their vote. And he did so with an artful touch that’s likely to earn dividends in the days and weeks to come.
This wasn’t a speech for the ages. But it may have been one of the most effective speeches by a presidential nominee in American history.
Romney made no effort at soaring oratory. The speech’s quality was epitomized by the contrast he sought to draw between Barack Obama’s outsized sense of himself and Romney’s plain-spoken common sense: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”

No more fancy talk; that has gotten us nowhere. “What is needed in our country today is not complicated or profound,” he said. “It doesn’t take a special government commission to tell us what America needs. What America needs is jobs. Lots of jobs.”

He and his speechwriters didn’t try to pull off a killer soundbite, or to design an individual moment they hoped would lead every newscast.

No, the man himself was the message — the businessman, the man of faith, the patriot, the loving husband, the caring father, the devoted son. The unflashy success story who’s asking for your vote so he can roll up his sleeves and fix what’s broken.
The only real coup came with its surprise tear-jerking moment, when Romney related a heretofore-unknown story about his father putting a rose on his mother’s pillow every day — and told how his mother realized his father had died on the only day in their 64 years of marriage that the rose was not there.

That story, like so much in the speech’s first half, was designed to “humanize” Romney, who lags President Obama by double digits when pollsters ask who is more likable.

(Earlier in the evening, a stunning series of tributes to Romney’s remarkable personal generosity delivered a genuine emotional wallop — and would’ve worked better for him in the half-hour preceding his arrival on stage than Clint Eastwood’s entertainingly bizarre effort at improv comedy.)

Throughout that first half, Romney talked about the importance of women just as his wife Ann did two days earlier — and took no chances he would not be heard. He talked about his mother running for Senate, and the women governors who were on the stage this week, and the heroism of his wife dealing with five kids.
This was nothing less than relentless pandering to undecided women voters. Romney and his people surely knew it.

As a former presidential speechwriter who believes in the elevating power of sophisticated rhetoric, I would’ve preferred a more muted and indirect appeal along these lines, for purely aesthetic reasons if no other. But in his contest against Obama, Romney has a gender gap, and the Romneyites are probably right that subtlety is not going to close it by Nov. 6.

Most important was the overall tone, again consistent with the big speeches of the convention — one in which the failures of the Obama presidency were entirely separated from any criticism of Obama himself or of anyone who voted for him.
Indeed, the buoyant optimism with which so many cast their vote for Obama in 2008 was given its due and then used against Romney’s rival: “If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn’t you feel that way now that he’s President Obama? You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.”
America, he said, “has been patient. Americans have supported this president in good faith. But today, the time has come to turn the page.”

Romney said his turnaround plan would create 12 million jobs — by cutting the deficit, fighting for free trade and fighting unfair trade practices, moving toward energy independence by taking advantage of American resources and championing small business by eliminating needless regulation and keeping their taxes low.

These specifics were plain as well — and nervy, since they were specific and since he can be held to account for them if he falls short as president. But the public got to hear what he’d do, without adornment.

The speech’s lack of grandeur was the point. We’ve had enough of grandiosity. He wants to get to work.

There was no big moment. The speech, taken as a whole, was a very big moment indeed.
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