"The White House admitted today that President Obama made no phone calls – none, zero – on the evening of September 11, 2012..."

"... during the seven or eight hours when Americans were being murdered in Benghazi. He didn’t talk to Leon Panetta, or any military personnel, or Hillary Clinton. What was he doing that night? We may never know; perhaps writing the speech that he gave at a campaign event the next day in Las Vegas."

Power Line is really interested in the Miss Universe contest.

"I didn’t live-blog tonight’s Miss Universe show, but I kept notes as it went along, and so what follows are my impressions as the event unfolded. With a lot of stuff left out, like how mediocre the music was, and who in the world are the judges, anyway? So here goes...."

I guess there's still a place in pop culture for beauty contests, but I haven't considered watching one in decades. I remember when I was a kid, around 1960, watching Miss America and Miss Universe and feeling like these were very important events that everyone was watching. Even Miss U.S.A. and the Junior Miss pageants seemed important.

We were just talking last night — an in-person conversation, not a blog thread — about how American culture these days is no longer fixated on ideal feminine/masculine beauty as set apart from actual beautiful individuals who perform as actors or singers. This subject came up in the context of watching a documentary about a historical political figure who was fixated on ideals of feminine/masculine beauty represented in sculptures and paintings and so forth.

"It seems obvious that the evolution of social issues from crime and welfare to abortion and gay marriage has hurt the Republican Party."

Writes John Hinderaker, reminding us what the "social" issues were in the Reagan era

Crime and welfare were serious public policy issues that could be, and were, debated from empirical premises. Abortion and gay marriage are moral, largely religious issues, and are less amenable to public policy debate. They are, for reasons that are entirely understandable, governed more by emotion than by empirical data. 

Let's acknowledge that crime and welfare were also coded racial issues and people reacted emotionally to them. But, okay, there was empirical data to inject into the argument, and abortion and gay marriage are more philosophical.

Hinderaker says the GOP must "recalibrate" how it handles the social issues and offers some suggestions.

Myself, I disagree with the GOP on these present-day social issues, but I don't like the Democrats either. I'm keeping my distance, which is, currently, alienated from both parties. I have little hope the either party will appeal to me in the near future, so I think I will calmly observe and comment on their struggles. I've avoided the routine election post-mortem articles, which are mostly banal and full of bogus hindsight clarity. But, going forward, I plan to cherry-pick and link to some things like Hinderaker's that strike me as going beyond the usual dull fare.

"Are the Democrats trying to steal Pennsylvania?"

Power Line is asking... and we all should be monitoring.

"We wanted to engage in Libya but the administration told us to stand down...."

(Via Power Line.)

Are the media protecting Obama, pre-election, from the full impact of the Benghazi story?

"What we already know about Benghazi is a scandal of the highest order..."

... the ambassador asked for more security after a series of terrorist threats and attacks, but didn’t get it, even on the anniversary of September 11. The administration knew that four Americans had been killed in a successful terrorist attack by an al Qaeda affiliate, but lied about the event for weeks in hopes of minimizing political fallout. Extraordinarily courageous Americans fought a seven-hour gun battle against well-armed and well-organized terrorists who vastly outnumbered them before finally succumbing, during which time the Obama administration did nothing. And when the bodies of the dead Americans were returned to the United States, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton misappropriated the occasion to deliver politically-motivated lies, both to the victims’ survivors and to the American people. All of that we now know for sure. If, in addition, there is credible evidence that American soldiers, fighting desperately for their lives against our country’s most bitter enemies, called for help but were cynically left to perish in order to protect Barack Obama’s petty re-election campaign, Obama will not only lose the election but will be turned out of office in disgust by a clear majority of voters. Reporters and editors know this. It will be interesting to see how they respond during the coming days: will they do their jobs, or will they assist their candidate with his cover-up?

I presume they would say — if they deigned to answer Power Line's question — that the Benghazi story is too complicated and inflammatory to resolve in the narrow time before the election and that it's unfair to dump this hugely burdensome issue on the President now. It would have an undue effect on the minds of the voters, who must be protected from an emotional flare-up which will keep them from weighing all the issues in the proper proportion. This is especially true — they would not say out loud — when the skewing goes against their preferred candidate. Of course, an equivalent issue affecting the incumbent in 2004 would have been splattered everywhere.

A Romney victory would give us the benefit of leaving the Benghazi scandal in the past. It will still be important to investigate, but it won't — like the Watergate scandal, after the Nixon re-election — cripple a sitting President.

"[F]or ordinary conservatives, as opposed to long-beleaguered conservative law professors, this case wasn’t about proving law professors wrong..."

"... it was about limiting the power of the government by overturning the coercive mandate. That objective was not achieved."

I'm just another lawprof, but I think the Commerce Clause decision matters a lot. Yes, Congress can work around its limit by tapping the taxing power, but it's not politically easy to tax.

"So the Obama administration... deliberately put the life of a British agent in jeopardy... someone who had infiltrated al Qaeda."

A much more serious breach of security than the case of Valerie Plame that everyone once cared so deeply about.

"The movie pejoratively claims that the 'Bain Way' was shorthand for being able to 'turn the misfortunes of others into their enormous financial gains.'"

"Bain Capital was actually an offshoot of Bain & Company, a consulting firm, and the 'Bain Way' refers to its heavily analytical and data-driven approach to problems."

More here:

Bain didn’t make “people lose their jobs;” on the contrary, it created all of the jobs in Gaffney that [Rick] Perry is talking about. It would have been good if the jobs had lasted more than four years, but there was obviously a net benefit of four years’ work to the employees.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman declines to update us on the number of Recall Walker signatures gathered.

Hmmm.

Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said during a Tuesday conference call that the petitions will be turned in to state election officials on Jan. 17. They need 540,208 for both [Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch] to trigger recall elections.

Recall organizers said on Dec. 15 that they had 507,000 signatures for Walker but would not give a number for Kleefisch. Tate is still refusing to say how many signatures they have for her, but he says enough will be turned in to force a recall.

Tate says they are on track to get 720,000 signatures for Walker.

Why not tell us the numbers? Why did they previously announce the number they had for Walker but clam up about Kleefisch? Could they be reserving the option to say they failed to get enough signatures?

Why would they do that? I can think of a few reasons: 1. Their polling might show that Walker (and Kleefisch) would probably win; 2. Their fundraising is (I'm guessing) way behind Walker's, and Walker has already gone ahead with some excellent advertising, putting them at a serious disadvantage; 3. They don't have a candidate to run or they only have multiple candidates who'll have to beat each other up in a primary; and/or 4. They're worried that a recall election will have a negative effect on other elections that will be taking place in 2012.

ADDED: Another issue might be the prevalence of bad signatures on the petitions. Let's say they have more than the needed 540,208 signatures, but they know they've got a lot of questionable signatures in there. They don't want signature gatherers to slack off, thinking they've got it made. And the proportion of bad signatures isn't an issue they want to talk about.

AND: John Hinderaker says:

I was with Walker at a lunch event a few weeks ago, and he observed–correctly, I think–that the recall campaign has repercussions far beyond Wisconsin. If Walker, having carried out the promises on which he campaigned, can be evicted from office by the overwhelming force of left-wing money, reformers everywhere would be given pause. Likewise, if Wisconsin’s voters repudiate the Left’s vindictive campaign, it will give added impetus to reform efforts in other states.

So how is Walker doing? He has raised a fair amount of money to defend the recall, although he probably will be outspent two or three to one....

"If the Obama administration did arrange for the shipment of arms to Mexican drug gangs..."

"... not for any legitimate public purpose but in order to advance a left-wing political agenda, and those guns were used to murder hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American border agent – which they were – then we are looking at a scandal that dwarfs any in modern American history."

John Hinderaker, trying to fathom Fast and Furious. We really do need an explanation. If Hinderaker's conclusion seems extreme, consider that it could be easily refuted by a clear statement from the Obama administration disclosing the true and legitimate purpose. The absence of such a statement propels us toward the extreme conclusion.

Anti-Semitism at the Occupy Wall Street protests?

Power Line, with a video clip, says:

Given the extraordinary media attention that was paid to fictitious claims of racism at Tea Party rallies, it is amusing to see the press avert its eyes from repeated incidents of anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street protests, even as Democratic politicians endorse the “movement” almost unanimously and without qualification.

Instapundit says:

In a movement attacking “greedy bankers” and “the 1%”? Inconceivable!

This makes me want to bring up something I wrote after I saw Michael Moore's movie "Capitalism" back in 2009:

I think Moore is seriously motivated by Christianity. He says he is (and has been since he was a boy). And he presented various priests, Biblical quotations, and movie footage from "Jesus of Nazareth" to make the argument that Christianity requires socialism. With this theme, I found it unsettling that in attacking the banking system, Moore presented quite a parade of Jewish names and faces. He never says the word "Jewish," but I think the anti-Semitic theme is there. We receive long lectures about how capitalism is inconsistent with Christianity, followed a heavy-handed array of — it's up to you to see that they are — Jewish villains.

Am I wrong to see Moore as an anti-Semite? I don't know, but the movie worked as anti-Semitic propaganda. I had to struggle to fight off the idea the movie seemed to want to plant in my head.

And, unsurprisingly, "Michael Moore is giddy over Occupy Wall Street."

ADDED: I see that the blog I don't link to has linked to this post and caused a commenter to say:

I don’t, can’t, won’t, and woulnd’t, read Althouse – even on pain of death.

But I’d bet that as much as she screams about anti-Semitism here, and in Michael Moore’s films, she was lustilly cheering the anti-Semitic parts of Mel Gibsons snuff film about Jesus.

Beautiful. Smear me. Don't even check to see what I wrote about "The Passion of the Christ." I'll Google it for you (though apparently you'll never read this). There's this, from January 11, 2005:

Michael Moore and Mel Gibson have more mutual admiration than you might think:

Asked if he had seen Mr. Gibson's film, Mr. Moore lighted up.

"I saw it twice," Mr. Moore said. "It's a very powerful film. I'm a practicing Catholic. My film might have been called 'The Compassion of the Christ,' though. The great thing about this country is the diversity of voices. When we limit the voices, we cease being a free society."

When Mr. Gibson walked to the press room lectern, he and Mr. Moore seemed delighted to meet each other.

"I feel a strange kinship with Michael," Mr. Gibson said. "They're trying to pit us against each other in the press, but it's a hologram. They really have got nothing to do with one another. It's just some kind of device, some left-right. He makes some salient points. There was some very expert, elliptical editing going on. However, what the hell are we doing in Iraq? No one can explain to me in a reasonable manner that I can accept why we're there, why we went there, and why we're still there."

Oh! It's Michael Moore again. Isn't that funny?!

But I'm looking for stuff about "The Passion." There's this on March 15, 2004 (a couple months after I started blogging:

Read "Hollywood Rethinking Faith Films After 'Passion'" in today's NYT...

The movie's box-office success has been chewed over in studio staff meetings and at pricey watering holes all over Hollywood, echoed in interviews with numerous executives in the last week. In marketing departments the film is regarded as pure genius; its director, Mel Gibson, is credited with stoking a controversy that yanked the film from the margins of the culture to center stage, presenting it as a must-see.

If only someone had filmed that. I would pay to see the edited footage of those meetings! "Chewing over" the popularity of the crucifixion! "Pure genius" to "stoke a controversy" about anti-semitism as a publicity stunt! What else could we do that would be like that??

And on July 31, 2006:

Mel Gibson, you are discredited forever.

... A lot of [my commenters] are defending Gibson and complaining that people are criticizing him because he's considered right wing. I note that doesn't explain my position, which has nothing to do with his politics, whatever they're supposed to be....  Gibson...  has revealed something loathsome about his mind that affects our interpretation of the works of art that sprang from that mind. In particular, it changes "The Passion of the Christ," which had to be defended at the time of its release from charges that it is anti-Semitic.

And December 5, 2006:

If "Apocalypto" is a great work of art, I want Mel Gibson to get full credit for it. Am I taking back what I said last summer, in a post titled "Mel Gibson, you are discredited forever"? Not really. The point there was that what we know about the artist's mind belongs in our interpretation of his work. For that reason, what we learned about him had a very damaging effect on the meaning "The Passion of the Christ," which had already aroused suspicions of anti-Semitism. 

And, for the record, I've never seen the movie "The Passion of the Christ," which came out before this blog started.

"So, is Bloomberg’s story titled 'The Secret Sins of General Electric'?"

"Or, in the online version, 'General Electric Flouts Law With Secret Iran Sales?' Of course not. G.E. is generally identified with the Democratic Party. Does anyone seriously doubt that Bloomberg wanted to do a hit piece on Koch Industries solely because that company’s owners are prominent conservatives? Of course not."

"Since getting wiped out in the 2010 election and failing in their massively-financed recall elections, Wisconsin’s Democrats have embarked on a permanent temper tantrum."

"Like little children, they apparently intend to stamp their feet and hold their breath until they get their way. Most recently, they infiltrated and disrupted a Rotary meeting at which Paul Ryan was speaking. More than forty policemen were needed to keep the unruly Democrats under control; they escorted twenty from the Rotary meeting and arrested three."

Video at the link — to Power Line, via Instpundit ("WISCONSIN CRACKUP... So much for that civility crap they were preaching after Tucson").

Why am I getting my Wisconsin news through Instapundit and Power Line? I read at least 3 Wisconsin news sites every day.

You don't have to answer that. It's a rhetorical question. I'm being sober and civil. In Wisconsin. Even though I think the "civility crap" is bullshit.

Michele Bachmann, challenging Obama in the empathy dimension.

"That Barack Obama is without a clue when it comes to the economy is no revelation, but that he lacks empathy — traditionally a Democratic refrain — is a bold and interesting twist. The fact is that Obama does often seem to be weirdly detached from the problems he ostensibly is trying to solve. Perhaps that is just his style; perhaps it suggests that his real objective is to advance leftist objectives like government takeover of medicine, not to improve the lot of working Americans. Be that as it may, the fact that Bachmann is an unusually empathetic person positions her, perhaps uniquely, to take that particular approach to Obama's failures."

Says John Hinderaker (a Minnesotan with a Minnesota conflict: he knows Bachmann but supports Pawlenty).

[Post title corrected: I didn't mean to write "the empathy direction."]

"Resign? Hell no! I want Anthony Weiner to be the face of the Democratic Party."

Says John Hinderaker:

I completely fail to understand why any Republican would call for Weiner's resignation. Are you kidding? I want him in Congress forever, if possible! I want him representing his party on every other cable news show, as he has done for the last several years. I want people to snicker every time they see a "D" behind a Congressman's name. Anthony Weiner is the gift that keeps on giving, the twit that keeps on tweeting!

Yet the Democrats — it seems — would like the Republicans to do the work of ousting their masturbating boy. Here's Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

How about this headline: "Pelosi Wants a Weiner Probe.".. Okay, now, she was quick on the draw here, folks. ... Pelosi and the Democrats scared to death. "Oh, my God, this guy's poison! Get him out of here. Get him to the Ethics Committee."... Pelosi knows that the House is now in Republican hands. Therefore the Ethics Committee, at the end of the day, has a Republican majority....

The liberals are throwing Weiner under the bus and they're asking him to resign and a number of things, or could it be -- I just throw this out there as a possibility; I know it's gonna sound lame to some of you and it's gonna sound like a stretch but -- maybe Pelosi and the Democrats are hoping they send Weiner up there to the Ethics Committee and the Republicans go bonkers with it and start overreaching and turn Weiner into a victim of these rascally Republicans. She's doing this as a way of creating sympathy for the poor guy because these mean-spirited Republicans won't let him speak.

Now, I don't think this theory has any credence 'cause I don't think the Republicans have it in 'em to act that way. I don't think that they would overreach. But I do know that when it comes to the Democrats, everything is not what it appears to be on the surface. So I'm not totally convinced that simply demanding that the Ethics Committee take care of Weiner is, in fact, Pelosi and the Democrats wanting to wash their hands of Weiner. 

Wash their hands of Weiner... Pelosi Wants a Weiner Probe... Rush loves to dabble in the deniable dirty talk. But don't you think he's right that the Democrats would like to find a way to lure Republicans into the ones who end up looking bad? Those terrible Puritans, who want to end sex for everybody.

If I wasn't one of the "conservative bloggers" that Kloppenburg was talking about...

... why doesn't the Kloppenburg campaign respond to my email and specify who they were? The idea that I was one of the bloggers is now an internet meme with some life to it. Here's Power Line, this morning. [AND: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.]

As I wrote in an update at the first link, above, I've been able to figure out that one of the "conservative bloggers" was Christian Schneider. Someone in the comments states flatly: "You were not one of the bloggers." Meade responds:

Who were the bloggers? Kloppenburg used the plural, so she clearly meant more than one. Or was she not accurate with her facts?

Also, why would her campaign not reply to Althouse?

Now that the question of Althouse being the "conservative blogger" is becoming an internet meme, it appears that the Kloppenburg campaign is incompetent and unprepared for the questions and scrutiny that lie ahead.

That "15 second" pregnant pause may be only the beginning of awkward moments for JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Indeed. I'm not being vain and narcissistic about the campaign's failure to respond to my email. I'm commenting on the meaning of the absence of a response. In my post, I note that Kloppenburg listed 4 reasons being suspicious of what happened with the reporting of the votes in Waukesha, but "2 of the items are the absence of anything." I added:

An absence of evidence might be probative of something that matters, but you have to build a foundation for why it matters.

Now, I'm talking about an absence: the failure to provide he names of the bloggers and the links to the blog posts that show the "prior knowledge" of the missing votes. And I have built the foundation for why this absence is probative of something that matters. The internet meme is hurting Kloppenburg's credibility and undermining the assertion that an independent investigation is needed.

My working theory at this point is that there was only one blogger, Christian Schneider, and the Kloppenburg campaign is afraid to admit that the plural "bloggers" was false.

Or they really were talking about me.

"What the Democrats don't like isn't dictatorship, it is democracy."

"That is why the Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate fled the state en masse — they prevented a quorum, so that a vote they were going to lose couldn't take place. Once again, it is democracy they are trying to frustrate, not dictatorship."

Timothy Egan's NYT column "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings" requires fisking...

... and I'm relieved to see that John Hinderaker has already done the grisly task.

"Controversial propositions."

With health care politics raging, it's refreshing to debate over something — anything — else, and here, John Hinderaker has just listed a bunch of controversial things he feels like asserting are true. (Via Instapundit.) I'm going to respond to the items that it amuses me to respond to.

* Much as Bob Dylan was the most authentic spokesman for his generation, Taylor Swift is the most authentic spokesman for hers.

Well, that's a trick assertion, since Bob Dylan was never about authenticity:

During the first half of the concert, after singing "Gates of Eden," Dylan got into a little riff about how the song shouldn't scare anybody, that it was only Halloween, and that he had his Bob Dylan mask on. "I'm masquerading!" he joked, elongating the second word into a laugh. The joke was serious. Bob Dylan, né Zimmerman, brilliantly cultivated his celebrity, but he was really an artist and entertainer, a man behind a mask, a great entertainer, maybe, but basically just that—someone who threw words together, astounding as they were. The burden of being something else — a guru, a political theorist, "the voice of a generation," as he facetiously put it in an interview a few years ago — was too much to ask of anyone.

But no, it's not a trick assertion because he said "most authentic." Or is it that we Baby Boomers were raging phonies, and the biggest phony would thus be the most authentic. As for Taylor Swift, she seems like a nice person. Is she bland or am I jaded to find her too bland to care about? Is one more or less authentic when nice and bland?

So, my proposition is: Authenticity is bogus.

Back to Hinderaker:

* The three most desirable actresses in movie history are Paulette Goddard, Anna Karina and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

"Desirability" isn't a good abstraction. Hinderaker likes the brunette gamine. 

* London is the world's greatest city, and Israel is the world's most exciting place.

I can live without that kind of excitement. Have you noticed Indiana?

* America's youth have never been the same since Saturday morning television went from real programming (Fury, Sky King, the Cisco Kid, etc.) to cartoons.

I can't even remember that those shows were on in the morning. When I think about "Sky King," I remember this from Bill Bryson's "Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid": "Even at six years old, and even in an age as intellectually undemanding as the 1950s, you didn't have to be hugely astute to see that a flying cowboy was a fairly flimsy premise for an action series. Sky could only capture villains who lingered at the edge of grassy landing strips and to whom it didn't occur to run for it until Sky had landed, taxied to a safe halt, climbed down from the cockpit, assumed an authoritative stance, and shouted 'Okay, boys, freeze!' — a process that took a minute or two, for Kirby Grant was not, it must be said, in the first flush of youth." Now, I have to admit, I didn't think about that at the time. What I thought about was how it seemed that there was a competition between "Sky King" and "Whirlybirds" and that everyone had an opinion about whether they preferred airplanes or helicopters. I was adamantly helicopterist.

So my controversial proposition will be: The best people prefer helicopters to airplanes. 

* The only good lawyer show in the history of television was Perry Mason.

False. "The Defenders." That was the good one. 

* The smartest person whom most Americans see on a regular basis is Simon Cowell.

Ha. Maybe. I'm going with a corollary: Americans are better able to enjoy displays of intelligence that come with a British accent. And: What seems especially smart about Cowell is that he's willing to come right out and say — quite directly — things that are true. He gets away with doing that on television because he's got a British accent. An American panelist with the same amount of time to express an opinion will need to blow at least half of it on blather intended to make us feel that he is a nice (and normal) person.

That's all I've got to say. Sorry I didn't take the bait on any of Hinderaker's historical propositions — the best and worst characters in history and so forth. Or, no, I can make one very grand assertion: The best and the worst human beings who ever lived were undoubtedly shunned by most people and forgotten soon after they died.