| Morning Jolt - 09/27/12 By Jim Geraghty Here's your Thursday Morning Jolt. Enjoy! Jim A Brief Programming Note The Morning Jolt is changing e-mail distribution systems this week. My understanding is that this will have no significant change in your enjoyment of this newsletter. Nothing is changing on my end. Today, just like every preceding edition, I write it all out, then send it along to National Review Headquarters in New York for a quick review and editing, and then they send it into the giant machine full of pneumatic tubes to send it out to everyone on the e-mail list. Basically, this week we're switching to a new machine full of pneumatic tubes. As those who have written me for tech advice have learned, I understand almost nothing about how the magic box makes my words appear on the Internet. My first piece of advice for those not receiving this newsletter is, "Check your spam filter." My second piece of advice is, "Are you sure you checked your spam filter?" By the way, if you enjoy the Jolt, may I ask that you forward it to folks who don't subscribe already? Don't sign them up without their permission; just send them one and tell them that you enjoy it. I'm told the circulation is doing fine, but obviously I want to reach as broad an audience as possible. An early reader said that the Jolt felt less like a newsletter than an e-mail from a friend, and I really liked that description. I don't know if you've noticed, but just about every publication is offering some morning newsletter now, and my sense is that a lot of them are pretty interchangeable -- here are the headlines, here's what's on the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, AP wire, etc. And if you want that sort of thing, that's fine. But my attitude when the Powers That Be at NR asked me to start doing this was that if I was going to spend late nights and early mornings writing, I ought to write something I would want to read myself. Politico Columnist Writes Anti-GOP Satire; Lefties Completely Fooled, Repeat as Fact You want to talk cocooning? When Roger Simon wrote in Politico Wednesday that Paul Ryan's new nickname for Mitt Romney is "Stench," a number of news outlets -- from MSNBC to Mediaite -- took it seriously. Simon told BuzzFeed: "Some people always don't get something, but I figured describing PowerPoint as having been invented to euthanize cattle would make the satire clear. I guess people hate PowerPoint more than I thought." Among those fooled? Paul Krugman. The thing is, every cycle we see this sort of thing. Back in 2004, this Democratic Underground post was making the rounds in the final days: Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 9:51 PM To: Class of 1976 discussion group.; Class of 1976 discussion group. Subject: RE: Notes from a friend on what Kerry's team is saying ok, got a call on my cell phone this am while taking my son to hockey. my friend in the kerry campaign spoke late last night with mark mehlman of the bush team. mehlman was a roomate of my friend when they were both at the harvard law school. they are at opposite ends of the politcal spectrum, but are very good friends. mehlman says the bush team is in "major melt down" because their polling has them losing in ohio and florida, so they are in a mad dash to pull something out in the upper midwest. michigan isn't really in play. he called it a "head fake". wisconsin is slipping away, bush spoke in green bay today to less than 5,000 people (kerry drew 80,000 in madison on thursday). iowa has the numbers potentially but they've focused on it way too late, after the dems had a massive absentee push, so iowa is unlikely. they can't win with minnesota alone and even that state doesn't look good. mehlman says that there is incredible discord at the top. cheney is absolutley livid with rove on the overall strategy ("we peaked too soon you bastard") and with karen hughes for not adequately preparing bush for the debates ("he looked like a g** d***** mental patient"). cheney is apparently a "real monster". the rnc doesn't know what to do because they can't get any clear direction from the top. mehlman says that bush's slide in their polls began about three weeks before the debates when kerry when into attack mode with major foreign policy speeches at nyu and at a national guard convention, the day after bush spoke. the slide accelerated big time after the debates, "everyone was as bad as the first with no let-up in free fall" according to mehlman. cheney freaked during the first debate, convinced that bush "'lost the f****** election in front of 65 million people". Now they simply don't have the numbers to win in Florida, have not got their ducks in a row to "deflect" the massive number of early voters and are having real trouble maintaining the base in Florida and elsewhere ("our people are just turning away"). in ohio they've been simply overwhelmed with the new voter registrations and have been unsuccessful in court challenges. bush's number actually go now when he visits ohio after Treasury Secretary Snow's comments in the state that job losses were a "myth". Additionally many repubs are pissed about the financial proligacy of Bush and Cheney and their incompetence in Iraq, so a lot are simply going to "take a pass", read not vote. bush apparently has been totally "out of it" believing Rove and Hughes that everything was fine and that victory was assured, but is finally and slowing catching on that he might lose this thing. yesterday morning when made aware of the bin laden tape in nh, simply said. "It's over." The first clue that the entire above message is BS: Bush's campaign manager was KEN Mehlman, not Mark Mehlman. As we all know, none of the above "rumors" were true. I reprint all that to illuminate how people are (a) willing to make up elaborate tales of chaos in the opposition in order to boost morale on their own side and (b) how credulous people are when they hear what they want to hear -- i.e., the other guys are hapless and doomed, the public is breaking to our side, a landslide victory is at hand, etc. Tobin Harshaw: As Ben Smith of Buzzfeed, a former Politico blogger, tweeted: "So uh a lot of people seem not to have picked up that @politicoroger's column was satire." Put more succinctly by conservative blogger JammieWearingFool: "Satire should actually be funny." Or, at least it should be pretty obvious. There is no underestimating the literal-mindedness of the American reader: Years ago when I worked at the Times we published a satirical op-ed column by Steve Martin riffing on the idea that a NASA Mars probe had discovered millions of kittens on the Red Planet. Shortly thereafter, a subscriber sent a terse letter to the editor asking us to "inform your science correspondent" that the lack of oxygen on Mars made kitten infestation highly unlikely. Naturally, no writer wants to put a blinking sign indicating "This Is a Joke" above his or her parody piece. But editors should realize that if there is even a chance that such a sign is necessary, it's probably best to spike the whole idea. Otherwise, you might end up fooling a lot of people, maybe even a Nobel Prize winner. In Simon's defense, it's not that hard to fool Paul Krugman. A lot of people believe what they want to believe because they see what they want to see. Muslim Leaders to Obama: No, We Still Refuse to Accept Freedom of Expression, Blasphemy This isn't surprising, just worth keeping an eye on: Insults to the Islamic prophet Muhammad are part of an organized assault on Muslim religious and cultural values and cannot be brushed aside, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said Wednesday, rejecting the case for free speech made by President Obama just a day earlier. "The obscenities that I have referred to that were recently released as part of an organized campaign against Islamic sanctities are unacceptable," Morsi said, referring to a crude Internet video that mocks Islam called "Innocence of Muslims." "We reject this. We cannot accept it," Morsi said, his voice thin with anger. "We will not allow anyone to do this by word or deed." In an address before the U.N. General Assembly that marked his debut as an international statesman, Egypt's first democratically elected president presented an unapologetically Islamic view of world events and Egypt's role in them. He said outrage over insults to Islam does not justify violence but said nothing directly about the attack two weeks ago on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Four years ago, Obama came into the Oval Office convinced that a respectful tone and an outstretched hand, coupled with his unique experience of living as a child in a Muslim country and past personal and familial connections to the Muslim world, would generate breakthroughs in the U.S. relationship with the Muslim world. Obviously, those breakthroughs haven't happened and from the continuous violence targeted at our diplomatic staff, it's easy to conclude things are worse. Obama seems to think that if we just do "X," it will lower the temperature in the pervasive anti-American rage in the region. But the issue is never "X"; the goalposts always move. Osama bin Laden first complained about the insult of U.S. troops on Saudi soil; those troops left, and OBL didn't change his tune one bit. Then we were told that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a provocation. Those troops left, and the Islamists are still raging. Now we're told it's some YouTube video. It's always going to be something -- some cartoon, some rumor of a burned Koran, some U.S. presence somewhere that offends and enrages them. The fact that Obama was wrong then is bad enough; the fact that he's still trying the same approach, four years later, suggests desperation, lack of inspiration, or denial. Then again, with Obama, "there is no Plan B" is a phrase we hear again and again. The Democrats' Magic Nine-Percentage-Point Lead in Florida In light of Wednesday's Quinnipiac New York Times/CBS News poll that used a sample that split 36 percent Democrat, 27 percent Republican, 33 percent Independent -- a sample that is nine percentage points more Democrat than Republican -- let's take a look at what Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac polling operation told Hugh Hewitt last month: HEWITT: Do you expect Democrats, this is a different question, do you, Peter Brown, expect Democrats to have a nine-point registration advantage when the polls close on November 6th in Florida? BROWN: Well, first, you don't mean registration. HEWITT: I mean, yeah, turnout. BROWN: Do I think . . . I think it is probably unlikely. HEWITT: And so what value is this poll if in fact it doesn't weight for the turnout that's going to be approximated? BROWN: Well, you'll have to judge that. I mean, you know, our record is very good. You know, we do independent polling. We use random digit dial. We use human beings to make our calls. We call cell phones as well as land lines. We follow the protocol that is the professional standard. By the way, if you're wondering on registration, Florida breaks down 41 percent Democrat, 36 percent Republican, 21 percent no-party registration, and 3 percent other. Obviously, not all registered voters will show up to vote in November . . . ADDENDUM: AG_Conservative: "Lady Gaga will leave the planet and Madonna will stay clothed if Romney wins, how much more motivation do you guys need?" To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com National Review, Inc. | 
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