Wednesday Night News & Notes

I ran 3.5 miles today. Working my way up to 15 per week and getting in shape to play hoops this winter. I ran 25 days last month so it's now a habit and I felt like I could've gone another mile tonight.

Anyway, here's what's new:

-Obama blatantly lies and says he never set the "red line". Despite the fact that there's tons of video of it, the media will parse it say that no, he didn't say that because they will do anything to protect The One.

-Can Anthony Weiner please just go away? What is up with NY Democrats. Cuomo, Shumer, Spitzer and Weiner are all just plain embarrassing. Yeah, we in NJ have the underage prostitute chasing Menendez but NY'ers take debauchery and downright sleaziness to new levels daily.

-The joy of socialism.

-Matt Drudge is about to part with the Republican party. I'll vote GOP but I am not in line with them on a lot of issues. I'm more of a conservative-libertarian who really wants nothing to to do the Christian wings of the party that is anti-gay anything and generally kill-joys. I'm a South Park Republican.

-The latest whip count on voting for war in Syria via Ace. It is not a done deal. Hopefully Boehner has this blow up in his face and is ousted as soon as possible.

-Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Pirates. 20 years without a winning season ended last night. Here's to them making the playoffs, knocking out the Braves and winning it all. 

-Hang in there y'all, only 5 more days until we open up a can of serious whoop ass on the Skins and RG III. This oughta get you a little psyched:

Support For Stimulus Craters

Credit the GOP and new media sites like Drudge, Hot Air and Instapundit for picking apart the porkulus bill line by line and keeping it at the front of the news for an extended period of time. Every day this POS bill sits out there the more it stinks and the more people are aware of just how rancid it is.

Check out the numbers:

Support for the economic recovery plan working its way through Congress has fallen again this week. For the first time, a plurality of voters nationwide oppose the $800-billion-plus plan.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% favor the legislation, 43% are opposed, and 20% are not sure.

Two weeks ago, 45% supported the plan. Last week, 42% supported it.

Opposition has grown from 34% two weeks ago to 39% last week and 43% today.

That would constitute a trend and not in the direction Obama and the Democrats want. This will drive down Obama's approval ratings as well if he doesn't act quickly and yank out the garbage while offering more robust tax cuts. Has a honeymoon ever been this short for any president? Think about the hope hype that The One came into to power with and here we are, a fortnight later and he's slipping fast and seems dazed and confused.

Oddly, you haven't heard much of the blame being laid at the feet of Bush because people bought into the idea that Obama and the Dems had a plan. Had they presented a plan that was at least aimed toward stimulating the economy and rebuilding infrastructure as promised, they'd be soaring but instead they used it to cram decades of pent-up liberal bullshit down our collective throats and the American people aren't having any of it.

Also odd is the fact that Obama is trying to gain GOP support as best he can because he sees the devastation that could be caused to his administration at the outset. I may not agree with the man but he isn't dumb.

Again, the rightish online media has ensured that this is a topic that isn't going to disappear any time soon and Obama finds himself in a corner because of it. If he cedes anything to the right, his liberal base will excoriate him. A catch-22 if there ever was one. Talk to anyone tomorrow at the local 7-11 or supermarket and ask them what they think; I guarantee that their response is something akin to what I'm saying. Obama has lost the propaganda battle and with it, he may just lose the war on this issue.

Via Hot Air, Mitch McConnell explains just how much money this inane bill really encompasses:

Obama: Hey W, Sorry My Team Are Immature Idiots

The Obama transition team still thinks they're in election mode:

President Bush did not offer a "quid pro quo" linking relief for automakers to a Colombia Free Trade deal in his meeting on Monday with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, the president-elect's transition team leader said Tuesday.

John Podesta said he wanted to clear up misreporting by newspapers that detailed a leak of the on-on-one meeting between the president and president-elect.

"While the topic of Colombia came up ... there was no quid pro quo in the conversation," Podesta said. "The president didn't try to link Colombia to the question of an economic recovery package going forward. They talked about both of them."

Podesta added that the reports were "not accurate" and the Obama team has "cleared up the confusion" after the White House complained that Bush was irked by news that the conversation had been cast as a trade-off between Bush signing a second stimulus package in exchange for congressional passage of the Colombia Free Trade Act.

The paper in question was the NY Times and the Obama people absolutely leaked the story to cast the current President in a bad light by insinuating he attempted to barter using the auto workers as a bargaining chip. It doesn't matter if it's true, it's how they wanted to frame the discussion. Drudge reported that the administration was pissed (and used strong language to get their point across) and Podesta rushed to calm the situation, which shows just who has the upper hand at this point as Bush is offering a transition like no president ever has and Obama's people are pulling sophomoric shit like this. Obama had to be upset by the leak as it shows them to be not quite ready for prime time players and told Podesta to handle it, pronto.

Obama had best ensure that he keeps the leaks to a minimum as every reporter who fawned over Obama during the election feels they are owed one and will print every leak they receive. Just as Bush put his staff on lock down during his first term, so must Obama or he will face some unpleasant days.

Huff Po Scrub is Incredibly Misguided

Angry little lib Dave Johnson has no clue what the hell he's writing about:

The Drudge Report is a right-wing site that is used to drive right-wing propaganda into the large, corporate media outlets. When a story is featured at the Drudge Report, you always have to ask why, and ask what is the right's intent behind getting this story into circulation.

...This is an attack. It is an obvious attempt to split the Democratic Party and its supporters, going into the elections. Duh!

Are you going to let them play you like a fiddle? Keep in mind who the enemy is here. The stakes are high: If we let the primary contest divide us how many hundred thousand Iraqis or Iranians will be killed before the 2012 elections, how much more will corporations take over our democracy, how much more concentration of wealth at the top will we see? Please do not be fooled by this stuff! If it appears at DRUDGE, you KNOW something is going on.

The piece that has our little commie (and I don't use the word lightly either but he's written for Common Dreams, Alternet and other far-left sites) so upset is written by Drudge, right? I mean it would have to be a Drudge exclusive to blame Drudge for posting it? Uh, wrong.

The piece Drudge linked to is a Breitbart post of an Associated Press article written by Bob Lewis.

So to summarize; This Huff Po blogger (a man who no one ever heard of labeled "the grandfather of the blogosphere") is slamming Drudge for linking to a piece written by the world's largest and decidedly left-leaning new organization calling it "propanda". It's a legitimate article saying that Governor Wilder of Virginia is put out about the Clinton's playing the race card. He says Drudge is trying to "drive a wedge" in the Dem party when this genius doesn't even realize the wedge is there and it was hammered in by Bill and Shillary.

That has to easily be the stupidest thing I've read in the blogosphere in a week, which is a lifetime in the 'sphere.

The Power of Drudge

Today Matt Drudge posted an item in which he said John McCain was begging the NY Times to squelch a story. It instantly got the blogosphere buzzing and proved once again the instant response that a story on Drudge's site can command.

Something very interesting happened in the wake of that story, McCain actually responded.

There are some serious heavy-hitters out there in the Internet pundit world: Kos, MyDD and TPM on the left and Hot Air, Instapundit, LGF and Captain Ed Morrisey on the right to name a few. None of those has ever forced a sitting Senator, let alone a presidential candidate, to respond directly to what they've written as quickly or explicitly as McCain did today.

That, my friends, is the power of the Internet as a whole and Drudge in particular. The NY Times website, MSNBC, Fox News and all the other media outlets wish they could harness the power that Matt Drudge has and it's been elusive. Drudge rules, he will continue to get bigger and any candidate worth his or her salt would be smart to get on Matt's good side as soon as possible.

More here.

Did the Times of London "Out" Hillary

Drudge is all over this. A Brit paper captioned a picture of Hillary and her assistant in this way:

"Hillary Clinton has been accused of having an affair with Huma Abedin," reads the caption.

There's long been the rumor out there that Hillary is in fact gay. If she is, so what? Is the Democrat party the party that is inclusive (dripping with sarcasm)? I would guess not.

I look at it this way, all Republicans have been fair game when it comes to being outed, the gay, liberal left has made it a sport. The left also hates Hillary so don't be too surprised if this has legs and continues throughout the campaign.