Occupy Wall Streetniks Settle In

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Leading indicators that the Occupy Wall Street movement isn’t going away anytime soon.

• This PBS Newshour’s piece on Thursday night:

 

• This piece from The Art Newspaper:

Occupy Wall Street group looks to open arts space

NEW YORK. A group within the Occupy Wall Street movement is in discussions to find a multi-purpose, indoor arts space, which is to be used for “studio space, rehearsals, concerts, storage, performances, exhibitions, teach-ins, film screenings, art classes for children, sleeping, etc”, according to its website. The Arts and Culture committee of the New York City General Assembly, the protest group behind the movement, is planning to use shared office space on Wall Street with other Occupy groups, and is considering another offer from the arts blog Hyperallergic to borrow space in its Brooklyn offices, among other options.

File under: The art of survival.

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DNC/Romney Slapfight

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

In response to Mitt Romney’s ridiculously misleading new TV spot attacking Barack Obama, on the American economy, the Democratic National Committee has posted this video on the web:

 

The DNC video has generated 9,678 views as of post time, vs. $134,000 in actual TV time for Romney’s ad.

And that’s just the first problem.

The bigger one, as Tommy Christopher of Mediaite points out, is this:

The problem with the ad is that it doesn’t challenge the underlying assertion by the Romney campaign, that President Obama doesn’t want to talk about the economy, or that he hasn’t been talking about the economy, when that’s pretty much all he’s been doing for the past few months. While it’s true that the President’s polling numbers are pretty dire right now, the DNC could easily have cited polling that shows support for the proposals in the American Jobs Act, and/or Congress’ record low approval.

The strengths of those arguments is certainly open for debate, but it makes no sense to repeat the Romney campaign’s attack without at least trying to respond to it. Good on them for calling out the dishonesty, but letting the underlying premise go unanswered was a misstep.

More missteps likely to come.

So, to summarize: Barack Obama is increasingly looking like the Rafael Nadal of politics.

And that, as Jimi Hendrix might say, ain’t too cool.

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Campaign Outsider’s Rove-ing Reporter

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

(First in a series of posts foreshadowing former House of Bush consigliere and current GOP gunsel Karl Rove’s shady activities.)

This New York Times report is mother’s milk to Karl Rove and his Super PAC American Crossroads (not to mention his 501(c)4 super-soaker Crossroads GPS):

Former Obama Fund-Raiser Gets Over 10 Years in Fraud and Bribery Case

CHICAGO — More than three years after his conviction on fraud and bribery charges, Antoin Rezko, a former real estate mogul and a once-powerful fund-raiser with ties to President Obama’s early political career, was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 and a half years in prison.

“Enough is enough,” Judge Amy J. St. Eve of Federal District Court said before she passed sentence. “The corruption in the Illinois state government has to stop.”

Which should jump-start a Crossroads attack ad on Obama in just about . . . tomorrow.

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Faye Dunaway’s New York Wrench-Control Apartment

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Last summer the hardworking staff chronicled actress Faye Dunaway’s dustup in Manhattan housing court about whether she had sublet her rent-controlled Upper East Side apartment to her son, Liam Dunaway O’Neill.

(See: My Rental! My Sublet! My Rental! My Sublet!)

Now comes the climactic conclusion, via the New York Times:

Fight Ends as Actress Gives Up Apartment

With little fanfare, the actress Faye Dunaway agreed this week to give up the rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper East Side that her landlord had sued to evict her from.

Ms. Dunaway’s lawyer informed the landlord, Henry Moses, on Monday that she had vacated the one-bedroom walk-up apartment that she rented for $1,048.72 a month.

File under: Faye Moveaway.

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Arianna Puffington

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Lede of New York magazine’s puff piece on blogeteria queen Arianna Huffington:

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Arianna Huffington, the 61-year-old editorial director of the newly merged AOL–Huffington Post, gathers a group of children around her on a white rug, reading a series of stories. Her outfit—tuxedo jacket, sensible pants, hair lightened to the color of Donald Trump’s and with a similarly distinctive swirl—is a little more formal than the event, a spa open to the public, calls for today, but in every other way this “oasis,” as she puts it, is a reflection of Huffington’s habits: a “cell-phone check” at a concierge desk (a sign encourages guests to “give your phone a boost while you unplug inside”), blue yoga mats rolled up in a bin (“I do yoga every morning”), a chef making smoothies with names like You’ve Got the Beet, and a buffet with Greek yogurt—“the best in the world,” she explains, pushing it forward. “Eat. My mother used to say if you didn’t eat every twenty minutes, there was something wrong with you.”

The rest of the feature seems just as muddle-headed, although – full disclosure – the hardworking staff stopped reading about a third of the way through since we’re not on this earth long enough to read mash notes to shape-shifting political opportunists.

Sorry about that.

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Lying Politician Edition)

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Interesting compare-and-contrast in the Boston dailies on the role of the press as political truth squad.

The Boston Globe’s Political Intelligence blog reports Mission Accomplished for Team Romney in its first TV spot:

WASHINGTON – Mitt Romney’s advisers are pleased with the reaction to their first TV ad of his campaign, saying they are successfully engaging with the person they view as their chief rival — President Obama — by including an intentionally deceptive quote from him in their ad.

“It’s all deliberate. It was all very intentional,” Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney senior adviser, said after last night’s debate in Washington. “We want to engage him on the subject he wants to avoid, which is his failure to create jobs and get this economy moving again.”

Actually, lying is just step one. Step two is releasing a press statement that includes “more complete context for the quote.”

And step three?

Fehrnstrom said it was the job of the media to provide the full context, not the campaign.

“You guys have it,” he said. “If you do your job [voters] will learn about it.”

So that’s our division of labor: The campaign ads lie, the news media clarify.

Except some, apparently, would leave out the second part. From a Boston Herald piece on the Romney ad rumpus:

Richard Benedetto, a political professor at American University, said the media shouldn’t get involved when it comes to television advertising wars.

“It’s not for us to be the referees of this battle. If a campaign feels an ad is unfair and misleading, they can make that charge and have the other guy defend himself,” Benedetto said.

The hardworking staff would prefer not to live in that guy’s world.

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Don Imus Calls Newt Gingrich . . . Oh, Wait – Don Imus Is Irrelevant

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The remains of Don Imus, whose syndicated radio show is simulcast on the equally emaciated Fox Business cable network, continue to rail against the political machine.

Via Mediaite:

Don Imus Calls Newt Gingrich ‘Disgusting’ And A ‘Fat, Repulsive Pig’

During a rundown of the polls this morning, Fox Business Network anchor/curmudgeon Don Imus colorfully ripped apart Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich, calling the former Speaker of the House “disgusting.” “He’s a fat, repulsive pig! I hate to be so harsh,” Imus sniped. “You go out in the woods and find a piece of old, dead wood, you lift it up and underneath there’s a bunch of bugs crawling around and white stuff…that’s Newt Gingrich.”

Actually that’s Imus himself, whose ratings have plunged sufficiently that he’s now jumping ugly on his listener/viewers.

Both of them.

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World Without Facebook

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Via techPresident:

Artist Ian Wojtowicz has created the UnFacebook World Map, a composite of the NASA Earth at Night map and Facebook’s Friendship Map

(Click to enlarge.)

Those were the days, eh?

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Air(head) Romney?

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

People magazine is about to publish an interview with Mitt Romney (R-Dishonest? Whatever) that includes this exchange (via Politico Playbook):

PEOPLE: What’s on your iPad, if you have one?

Romney: “On the treadmill, I put it on there. Let’s see: Eagles, Beatles, Roy Orbison, Randy Travis, the Killers. And games: Scrabble, Angry Birds.”

Really? On his iPad? Doesn’t that list sound more like an iPod? And is it possible he doesn’t know the difference?

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Air Romney

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

You’ve asked for it . . . you’ve waited for it . . . you got it.

Mitt Romney’s first TV spot (via the New York Times):

 

Not surprisingly, the ad is about as credible as Romney himself.

From the Times Caucus blog:

[T]he ad shows [Pres.] Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”

But the line, which is perhaps the spot’s most devastating moment, is also the one that seems to be the most taken out of context. In fact, at the time, Mr. Obama was referring to something that an aide to his then opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, had said in reference to the McCain campaign — not Mr. Obama, then or now.

In a 2008 interview with The New York Daily News, an aide to Mr. McCain warned, “If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose,” and Mr. Obama picked up the comment and began using it to mock Mr. McCain on the campaign trail.

Mitt Romney will say anything, do anything to become president of the United States.

That alone disqualifies him for the job.

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