Month: January 2012

Why did Sheldon Adelson give five million to Gingrich's PAC? Connie Bruck has a theory:

[Adelson] knows what it is to be counted out and then make a triumphant comeback; after the financial storm of 2008, Adelson’s company, Las Vegas Sands, nearly went bankrupt—but Adelson put $475 million of his family’s money into it, and has since reaped enormous profits from his casinos in Macao. And Gingrich’s long odds make the upside, for Adelson, even greater. He can surely savor the sweetness of that upside—being the single person to whom both the prime minister of Israel and the President of the United States owe everything.

But he's distancing himself a little now. A reader suggests why:

How can Adelson be intimidated? That's easy. His entire empire rests on gambling, and gambling is entirely dependent on licenses, which are awarded under circumstances that afford the state enormous discretion. It would take little to bring Adelson's empire tumbling (as indeed occurred in the fourth quarter of 2008, when his net worth plummeted some $24 billion in just a few weeks of market jitters). The GOP feeds off Adelson, but they also have plenty of kompromat on him. It wouldn’t take much to raise questions about his gambling interests in Nevada and elsewhere, to rattle his co-investors, and send them scrambling. Adelson's decision to fund Gingrich in his anti-Romney vendetta is still hard to understand. It shows Adelson taking some serious risks, and it’s hard to see where this gets him and his business interests in the long run.

Maybe just believes in Newt. But if Newt wins because of him, the two-state solution in Israel is dead.

Though the Syrian National Council claims to be coordinating more effectively with the Free Syrian Army, there's still evidence of discord between the SNC and the other major group, the National Coordination Committee:

[T]he Syrian authorities recognised the National Coordination Committee as a legitimate opposition group with the goal of dividing the opposition. This move discredited the organisation in the eyes of protesters [the Syrian regime offered to hold‘national talks’ with the opposition in July, 2011]. National Coordination Committee leader Haytham al-Manna has also contributed to the fratricidal struggle within the opposition by accusing the SNC of being financed by ‘American companies’. This echoes allegations made by Assad’s regime, which claims the opposition has been manipulated by foreign agenda. 

It's no surprise – for these among other reasons – that the military wing has significant support among protestors. Michael Weiss sees it gaining hard strength as well:

Military defections in Syria have been occurring at a much higher rate than has been reported in the international press. For this and other reasons, Syria’s conventional forces are probably much weaker than previously assumed. As I blogged the other day, rebel forces composed of both civilians and military defectors are now taking the fight to the regime’s elite brigades all throughout the Damascus suburbs. Though under-armed and ill-equipped, they’re beginning to organise themselves to an impressive degree and have already launched several daring raids against regime personnel.

If you want to contribute to the protest movement, you can sign this petition to the UN and Arab League demanding the arrest of Assad's tortures. Alastair Beach profiles Fadwa Soliman, a prominent actress who's become a symbol of the resolution. Maysaloon pens an anguished plea to regime supporters. Here's a film of a student protest in Aleppo being broken up and a straggler beaten:

This is a big rally in Homs:

Finally, this video documents a mass arrest of people quite possibly bound for torture chambers:

GOP White House vet Aram Bakshian makes the case:

Some bias is inevitable in any news operation. But in two months of heavy Al Jazeera viewing, I saw no evidence of pervasive pro-Muslim religious bias. On the contrary, most of the bias on display tended to be of the same liberal, secular variety that skews much of the reporting by mainstream American media, e.g., acceptance of "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators on their own terms as spokesmen for 99 percent of the American people. The only green bias discernible had nothing to do with the sacred color of the Prophet's banner and everything to do with Western-style tree hugging: a report on how Tasmanian devils, particularly nasty little antipodean marsupials, are on the brink of extinction because of their vicious tendency to bite one another, thereby passing on a contagious, fatal form of facial tumors. 

On the whole, I found myself better informed by Al Jazeera than by the so-called mainstream media on a wide range of issues during the two months I monitored its English transmissions.

Almost the entire blogosphere, including the Dish, is mocking Arthur Brisbane for his post on whether the NYT should be interested in the truth. Jack Shafer is an exception:

I think [Brisbane] was asking how fully reporters must tweeze every utterance spoken by newsmakers. Politics teems with gray areas and half-truths. If a reporter were to investigate every assertion of fact — assuming that that’s possible on deadline — the story he was supposed to be working on would dissolve into pixel dust.

Infinite skepticism is swell, but it requires infinite fact-checking, and who has time for that? There’s a longstanding joke among journalists about what an infinitely vetted wedding announcement would look like: "A couple representing itself as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith say they hosted a reception Saturday, to commemorate what they claimed was the marriage of their son, in an apartment on Park Avenue that they assert they own." As Edgar Allan Poe once put it, we crave "journalism in lieu of dissertation."

John Sides nods:

[H]ere is the problem that Romney confronts.  Americans perceive him as personally wealthy more than they do Obama.  They perceive him as caring more about the wealthy, but less about "people like me" and the middle class, than does Obama.  Moreover, Obama can "get away with" being perceived as personally wealthy or caring about the wealthy in ways that Romney cannot.  For Americans, Romney’s personal wealth is more intimately tied to the perception that he cares about the wealthy—and this in turn implies that he cares less for the middle class.

Similarly, Frum points out that America doesn't typically elect the super rich:

Before the Civil War, the parties (and especially the Democratic-Republicans) often nominated presidential candidates wealthy in land and slaves. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and John Tyler were some of the richest men of the young Republic. But since 1865, it has become unusual for parties to nominate very wealthy men. I can think of only five very rich post-1865 presidential nominees: John McCain, John Kerry, John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover and Samuel Tilden.

A new daily feature we are introducing on the Dish, where we will round up all the recent campaign ads and explore their impact. Alex Altman zooms in on the robust activities of Romney's SuperPac: 

Once it started buying ads, Restore Our Future never stopped. The $153,017 it spent that first week increased to $1.04 million the next, where it stayed relatively level until the week of Jan. 2, when the race shifted to New Hampshire. Romney’s support in the Granite State required less reinforcement, so Restore Our Future’s spending plummeted to $583,299 the week before the New Hampshire primary, before ratcheting back up to $2.1 million the following week. Even more ads — at least $2.58 million worth — will run next week, the last before the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary, where Romney hopes to all but sew up the nomination.

Most South Carolinians, however, will first see a version of the "King of Bain". Example of an abridged version:

Newt is calling on his SuperPac to "either to edit out every single mistake, or withdraw the entire film" because of errors – though of course much of the damage to Mitt is already done. I discussed the Romney camp's inadequate response here. Apparently the campaign has plans to unleash a more aggressive counterattack. In this ad, under his own name, Gingrich compares Romney to Kerry and Dukakis and throws in the French card for good measure:

Allahpundit is miffed:

[T]his is the second time in two days that Newt’s team has turned an otherwise effective spot into a caricature of an attack ad. Yesterday it was the old business about the dog on the roof of his car, today it’s the fact that, like a certain other filthy rich politician from Massachusetts whom conservatives disdain, Romney speaks French. Doesn’t famous brainiac Newt Gingrich speak a foreign language or two, or ten? This would have been a jolly fun zinger two presidential elections ago, but in case Newt hasn’t heard, we fight wars alongside the French now and everything. What does it prove? That Romney’s an elitist phony? Good news —the base already knows.

Gingrich has also been slamming Romney on abortion in South Carolina. In this radio spot, Romney reintroduces himself to the state's evangelicals: 

Michael Warren notes: 

The ad, featuring activists Mary Ann Glendon and James Bopp Jr. touting Romney's pro-life credentials, may also remind South Carolinians of DeMint's endorsement of Romney in 2008. DeMint has not endorsed a candidate for 2012 and has all but completely ruled out doing so before the January 21 primary in South Carolina. 

Igor Volsky has more. Romney's SuperPac is knocking Newt with this spot in South Carolina and Florida: 

Naturally, Gingrich is threatening to sue for defamation. Meanwhile, Santorum's SuperPac is running this spot in South Carolina:

Restore Our Future is already taking aim at Santorum in Florida (money quote: "And he even voted to let convicted felons vote"). Lastly, Rick Perry, who is now polling behind Huntsman in South Carolina, is not about to "quit on the future of America" and makes the commander-in-chief argument. This new Perry ad features a "Tebowing" football player seven seconds in:

Weigel giddily narrates the ad's "most inspiring" imagery:

How about the iPad2 playing a scene from Rocky, laid on top of Perry's now-sort-of-funny Time magazine cover? Or the soldiers unfurling a flag, so that we might see its glory? No, too generic. The video really picks up with the image of the small boy chasing fighter jets with his own wooden toy plane. We go from the local to the largest image ever seen in a 2012 ad: Only earth, seen from space, can demonstrate how massive Rick Perry's jobs record is. … 

Have you ever seen Obama smile towards God as the America flag flutters over him? I don't think so. 

"Now we have a bunch of progressives that are talking smack about our military because there were marines caught urinating on corpses, Taliban corpses. Can someone explain to me if there's supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a Taliban fighter? Someone who, as part of an organization, murdered over 3,000 Americans? I'd drop trou and do it too. That's me though. I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say? Come on people, this is a war. What do people think this is?" – talkshow host Dana Loesch.

A reader writes:

In your post you quote Jamelle Bouie as saying:

In the four presidential cycles where there has been a contested primary in South Carolina—1988, 1996, 2000, and 2008—voters have chosen the establishment candidate who went on to win the nomination: George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and John McCain.

Well, yes and no. Bouie makes a number of useful points in his piece, but this summing-up strikes me as a little misleading – both about South Carolina and about the main thrust of Bouie's piece. Republican primary voters in South Carolina didn't exactly "choose" McCain in 2008.

I think he got pretty much the same minority of votes as in 2000, but the anti-McCain vote (and a lot of it definitely was an ANTI-McCain vote) was fragmented among various other candidates running to the right of McCain. There seems to be a general consensus that if Fred Thompson had dropped out of the race, then Huckabee would have come out ahead of McCain.

In 2000, George W. Bush was definitely the establishment candidate, while McCain was the maverick. And by current Republican standards, Bush was presenting himself as a fairly "moderate" candidate (which turned out to be bogus, of course). But in the South Carolina primary that year, his campaign definitely portrayed him as being more right-wing than McCain, and as we all know, McCain was hit with a far-right smear campaign. Any South Carolina candidate who had to choose between Bush and McCain, and who was looking for the "most reactionary" candidate to vote for, would have voted for Bush – and they did.

And, in fact, Bouie's actual conclusion to his piece has a somewhat different slant from the quoted passage. This year, Bouie indicates, the great majority of South Carolina voters definitely ARE looking for the most reactionary Republican candidate they can find. Romney's good luck is that they have an embarrassment of riches in that respect – there are a bunch of reactionary candidates to split the anti-Romney vote … and, we might add, they represent different strands of reactionary politics, with Santorum at one pole and Paul at the other (and Gingrich off in his own orbit, as usual).

A reader tweets a reference to Pretty Woman:

[Fumbling with his tie, Edward (Richard Gere) tells Vivian (Julia Roberts) about his business.]
Vivian: You don't actually have a billion dollars, huh?
Edward: No. I get some of it from banks, investors… it's not an easy thing to do.
Vivian: And you don't make anything…
Edward: No.
Vivian: … and you don't build anything.
Edward: No.
Vivian: So whadda ya do with the companies once you buy 'em?
Edward: I sell them.
[Viv reaches for his tie.]
Vivian: Here, let me do that. You sell them.
Edward: Well, I… don't sell the whole company, I break it up into pieces, and then I sell that off, it's worth more than the whole.
Vivian: So, it's sort of like, um… stealing cars and selling 'em for parts, right?
Edward: [sighs exasperatedly] Yeah, sort of. But legal.