I know, I know it’s National Review and Erika Johnsen over at Hot Air will say it’s all part of Romney’s 378 point plan , yes siree, so stay pumped and keep on clicking onto us and don’t get annoyed by that irritating ad that always pops up…….

This Politico story is almost too depressing to contemplate:
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
It gets worse, so be sure to read the whole thing to make sure you ruin your week off right.
Meanwhile, it’s a good thing for Romney that absolutely nothing of any interest has been going on in the world this past week, and steady-as-he-goes Mitt can keep reminding the American public, when he bothers to emerge from the foxhole into which the media has driven him, that President Obama’s a nice guy, but by golly he’s in over his head, and gee whiz I saved the Olympics and, dadgummit, a CFO is just what this country needs right now. (Although even that’s not working any more.)

Not to worry..almost certainly within the next two days the Death Star will appear, Romney will step out of his pseudo plastic skin and hurl a rain of thunderbolts onto Obama’s head. The President will crumble and Mitt will shoot into a 20 point lead – it must be true because the people at Hot Air keep on saying that.

Yes folks it will need fire, passion and a clear vision of what the candidate stands for to get those supporters crawling barelegged over broken glass to get out the vote – so thank goodness Sarah Palin wasn’t nominated. If she had been the GOP candidate Obama would be leading in the polls by now….

There wasn’t much about this outside the Telegraph, Sun and Express – I wonder why?

Army officers have told troops on duty for the Paralympics to travel around in groups after servicemen were “attacked, verbally abused and harassed” during the Olympics.

In the worst case a lone soldier was abused, attacked and beaten near Tower Hill Tube station. Police are investigating but in a city swarming with CCTV there appears to have been little progress – one wonders if senior officers have have decided that making too much of it would cause trouble with the local Presbyterian community…

Those Presbyterians – always ready to be provoked….

h/t Brendan O’Neill at Spiked

Quentin Letts at the Daily Mail has obviously been asked to take London Mayor Boris Johnson down a peg or two in the light of the Olympic/Paralympic Borisfest.

Quentin has decided, therefore, to suggest that Boris is OK for a little light relief but would be no good in those situations where tough choices have to be made or brows need to be furrowed. So, in his piece on Cameron’s speech to the House on the findings of the Hillsborough Report he finished off with a dig at Boris.

Some people are currently bigging up the Mayor’s prospects. They should get real. This overdue, moving speech was one that Boris Johnson could never have given.

Mr Letts also reminded us that Boris needed to apologise as well

He once insulted Liverpool and his name was mentioned a couple of times towards the end of yesterday’s session. Should he once more apologise to Liverpool?

Actually he apologised at the time and he did so again today. But that is not the point. There is obviously a measure of irritation around Cameron’s circle about the mayor’s popularity and Quentin has probably been persuaded to spread a little poison.

Did the crowd’s reaction to Boris at the final parade of the Olympians annoy the Cameron cabal? Of course it did. But what always sticks in the throat of the Cameroons is something much more hurtful to the soul……Boris has gone before the electorate of London twice over the last five years and each time has won a mandate to govern. Cameron failed to do that in 2010 and as a result is stuck in a coalition with Clegg and Cable…

Oh dear, Dave – that must hurt….time for someone to ring Quentin again…

A lazy and childish piece of work Erika. This sort of intellectually vacuous fluff might be commendable in a high school magazine but not in anything that wants to be taken seriously

Wow – you certainly wouldn’t call that a demonstration of nuance..

It’s a comment on a post at Hot Air by Erika Johnsen in which she uses a poll of Europeans published in the UK Guardian to show that many of them don’t think much of GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (an opinion which, I believe, was until comparatively recently also shared by a great many US conservatives) She uses the results to show how Europeans are decadent and lily livered compared to Americans in general and Mitt Romney in particular.

What with their many debt crises and severe unemployment levels, coupled with their socialism and their general political foppishness — which is all just working out so well for them — the absence of the European layman’s endorsement is kind of a dagger to my heart. I think I may have to rethink my vote now. …Not. You’ll forgive me, Europe, if I prefer to work for an America that is a strong, robust, take-no-prisoners powerhouse of moral and economic righteousness, rather than just another impotent, piddling player on the international stage. Sorry I’m not sorry.

That’s fine, Erika – tell that to the Germans with their massive private sector, lower unemployment and export led prosperity…and not a Chinese loan in sight..

Foppishness – I bet that would go down well with those British soldiers with their tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, helping you with your “war on terror” and their comrades who are still getting killed or maimed fighting alongside your troops.

It’s a shoddy piece of hackery, designed to gain applause from the Neanderthal wing of the lumpenproletariat – and if you read the bulk of the comments she certainly scores a hit with the zombies. But “journalism” it certainly isn’t.

It appears that Erika “The Gem” Johnsen has taken over Allahpundit’s old role of dumping on those pesky foreigners. The trouble is that although Allah’s knowledge of culture and politics outside the USA was shallow and stereotyped he did write with fluidity and wit. Miss Johnsen lacks his saving grace. She has tried to create a kind of perky pseudo Palin schtick, striving to sell herself as a sassy tough as nails chick as at ease working out at the gym as she is downing beers with the guys at the bar.

Epic fail – Her style is contrived and her humour is leaden.

Fact is she was almost certainly hired by the powers that be at Hot Air to pimp Mitt Romney as a ballsbreaking conservative iron man who is so tea party he doesn’t even have to acknowledge the tea party. Romneycare? Forget it – I am sure Erika would say that was some other guy called Romney. Indeed it wouldn’t surprise me if she produced a rail and claimed that it was actually split by Mitt in his early days of rural poverty working with Abe Lincoln….

Amusing really, if it wasn’t so sad for, until a few months ago , you would hardly find anything in the Hot Air posts or comments that was favourable to Romney. Now it has become the digital arm of the Romney campaign – which explains Erika Johnsen…

Come back, Tina Korbe – all is forgiven…….

There is universal agreement that the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were the best ever, brilliantly organised, flawlessly presented with the stadium packed to the max every day (By the way, Mitt Romney, we are still waiting for that apology…) As a result London Mayor Boris Johnson has probably become one of the most popular figures in Britain – and considering he is a politician that is an astonishing feat – most of us Brits place politicians lower in our scale of trust and approval than estate agents, car salesmen or even journalists…..

Boris is a Tory but his appeal crosses the lines of party, class, gender and race. Last May when the Conservative Party vote was collapsing in the local elections he was re-elected as Mayor of London in a city that is traditionally left wing even though his core beliefs are those of the Thatcherite wing of his party – euro sceptic, smaller government, robust on crime, pro business etc

That’s partly because those values, though despised by by the Guardianista detachment of the middle classes cosily ensconced in the fashionable quarters of North London, happen to resonate with a substantial element of working class voters in the poorer boroughs. But it’s also because Boris, out of the box eccentric that he is, can connect with ordinary folk better than any other politician in the UK. His delivery, his vocabulary, his sense of humour break every rule of political speaking – just like Sarah Palin in the USA. Yet the two of them, although their styles are different, manage to achieve something golden – an electrical charge with their audience that creates a shared experience no other politician can hope to emulate.

They also share another special quality – the ability to use a folksy golly gosh manner to camouflage a shrewd and savvy political brain that is always five moves ahead of anyone else…

Just watch the reactions of the crowd before him and the athletes behind – this man CONNECTS…no wonder PM David Cameron looked a little nervous beside Boris – he could be watching the emergence of a future party leadership rival…

You have all probably heard it before but it’s one of those jokes that, like red wine, only matures with age because, as in Stalin’s USSR, jokes about the leader just aren’t made on the media….so they have to stay underground……

A doctor from France says: “In France , the medicine is so advanced that we cut off a man’s testicles; we put them into another man, and in 6 weeks he is looking for work.”

The German doctor comments: “That’s nothing, in Germany we take part of the brain out of a person; we put it into another person’s head, and in 4 weeks he is looking for work.”

A Russian doctor says: “That’s nothing either. In Russia we take out half of the heart from a person; we put it into another person’s chest, and in 2 weeks he is looking for work.”

The U.S. doctor answers immediately: “That’s nothing my colleagues, you are way behind us….in the USA , about 3 years ago, we grabbed a person from Kenya with no brains, no heart, and no balls….we made him President of the United States, and now……. the whole damn country is looking for work.”

h/t Peter Christie

A lot of disappointment across the board about Obama’s speech at the Democrat’s Convention, even from the liberal left. But was he ever a great orator or was it all a myth generated by a compliant media that almost everyone else was afraid to confront?

After all Iain Martin of the UK Daily Telegraph labelled Obama a “windbag” when he came to London in 2009 but clearly even the DT was shocked and it was blown down the memory hole….you can’t find the article now..

But at t last I have found at least one other person on the planet who agrees with me – Shawn P of Virginia Beach with his comment on this piece.

I always felt that he would have been ideal as one of those actors who are shown in insurance commercials telling us how such and such a policy was great for his family (cue the Obamas)…good for an eighty second spiel spouting a script containing all the buzzwords but no substance – and certainly no chemistry….if you want chemistry, go to Palin…

Whoops…..a tear jerking, guilt inducing campaign about child poverty in the UK that recently blasted forth from the hallowed temples of the charity Save The Children (STC) has backfired in spectacular fashion.

Breathlessly trumpeted by the BBC the STC core message was brazenly blatant – there are all these children living in poverty in the UK and the government needs to pay more to their families in benefits. Therefore the cuts in government spending introduced by the coalition not only need to be abandoned but reversed – otherwise lots of children will starve….

Oh dear – grab a tissue, reach for that credit card and send a generous donation to STC…..then contact the media and your MP demanding an immediate increase in the welfare budget.

Except – all is not as it seems in the world of charity campaigns.

The statistics are a tad dodgy

The gut wrenching video used actors

Justin Forsyth, the boss of STC, was a Labour spin doctor for Gordon Brown whose policy of throwing money at low income families did nothing to resolve the problem – and before then he was Tony Blair’s Special Adviser on poverty, climate change and trade. So hardly a political neutral…..

Forsyth, who earns £162,000 per annum as Save The Children’s CEO, is very much one of those people identified by UKIP’s Nigel Farage as our new ruling class. Before his job with the Blair/Brown Labour government he spent thirteen years working for Oxfam. He is therefore a classic product of the charity/campaign industry with little or no experience of wealth creation.

Make no mistake about it, there are a lot of people who now earn their living by working for charities and the salaries, especially at the upper levels, are the gateway to an extremely comfortable lifestyle. But the recession has forced these charities into an unseemly competition for a shrinking market so, like toothpaste manufacturers or lager brewers they need to indulge in a little re-branding to attract attention, something which can catch the eye on a slow news day…

Hence STC came up with the idea of starving UK children – it’s a new angle on an old idea. Of course some could say they have their heart in the right place and this old cynic might grant them that. But I can’t help thinking that it also has a lot to do with keeping Mr Forsyth and his STC colleagues in the style to which they have been accustomed…

After all, the CEO’s £162,000 has to come from somewhere…..

Nigel Farage on why our political elite simply do not have a clue….

Did you ever think that our political leaders have no real idea how most people live and lack experience in the real world? That they’re just college kids?

There are 61 members of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet today. Only 11 of them have any experience of working in the private sector. Mostly for less than five years. Over 24 have never had a proper job at all and a further 20 have worked for political lobbyists or campaign groups.

We’d be better off with a parliament that really reflected our society. We might even get some common sense then. In future we should think about who we vote for more carefully.